Apple Crumble, Apple Tart
by akissinacrisis
Summary: Six weeks after the end of the war, Hermione vanished without a trace. Eighteen years later, Ron goes looking for her and finds a little more than he bargained for: his child. What follows is the rapid unravelling of a long-kept secret over the course of a few hot days in August. Love, betrayal, Weasley family melodrama. Ron/Hermione, some Harry/Ginny. Rated M.
1. The Cottage Up North

**Apple Crumble, Apple Tart**

Story notes: All book canon taken into account except for Ron and Hermione's happily-ever-after as shown in the _Deathly Hallows_ epilogue: in this story, Ron and Hermione did not stay together and get married after the war, and their children, Rose and Hugo, do not exist.

This story is completely written. I am currently going through and putting finishing touches to it, and am posting the chapters as I go (probably every few days). So it will definitely not be abandoned unfinished.

Big thank you to excitedrainbow on LJ for proof-reading and cheerleading

Feedback is always always appreciated. I really hope you enjoy it :)

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**I: The Cottage Up North**

_Six weeks after the end of the war, Hermione vanished without a trace. Eighteen years later, Ron goes looking for her and finds a little more than he's bargained for: his child. What follows is the rapid __unravelling of a long-kept secret over the course of a few hot days in August. Love, betrayal, Weasley family melodrama. Ron/Hermione. 12+. 8 chapters. EWE for Ron and Hermione._

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**APPLE CRUMBLE, APPLE TART**

**I: ****The Cottage Up North**

The bus grinds to a violent halt and the doors fly open. 'Here you are!' shouts the bus driver. 'Oi – you there! Ginger!'

'What? Oh – right –' says Ron with a start. Standing up, he hesitates for a second – do you tip Muggle bus drivers if you ask them to tell you which stop is yours? – but then he notices the glares from the other passengers at his indecision and he hops off as fast as he can.

Abandoned on the country road next to a lonely, rustic brick bus stop on the outskirts of a village called Ambleside, Ron watches the bus hurtle off over the hill and out of sight. He realises that in his dilemma over stupid Muggle customs he forgot to thank the driver.

Still, he's on the right road. Supposedly. He is on a hillside: to the east, his right, is a high bank of long grass, covered with dark trees, trees that are thicker and darker than the ones that grow where he grew up in Devon. Further on ahead, there are a couple of precariously-balanced stone cottages, cut into the hill. To the west, his left, the hillside slopes down into the valley, where the almost too-picturesque village of Ambleside huddles around the tip of Lake Windermere.

His hands feel clammy: he wipes them on his corduroy trousers absently. He's out of practice at this. He hasn't gone on one of these little trips in three years, as George was kind enough to remind him this morning. George had let it be known that he was disappointed: disappointed that Ron was setting himself up for a fall again, when George had thought the trip three years ago was to be the very last one; disappointed that Ron was even doing this to himself – living in the past like this isn't healthy, as, take it from George, George well knows; disappointed that Ron was listening to the gossip of the cousin of Andrew Bailey who runs the apothecary. _Reliable _though 'You know, the French Ministry is full of Englishmen; when I was doing my research I saw all sorts of English names on the documents, Joneses and Grangers and Hopkirks and all sorts' _sounds_, Ron – at which point Ron clapped George on the shoulder and told him he'd be back in an hour.

So here he is, having Apparated to the centre of the larger town of Windermere, where he's been before, and having somehow managed to work the Muggle bus system – cautious, yes, but somehow it had felt necessary. Simple mistakes are easy to make on trips like this.

He pulls the scrap of parchment from his pocket. _4 Cranny Lane, Ambleside_.

He glances up at the sign on the bus stop. _Cranny Lane_. This is it.

Stuffing the scrap of parchment back into his trouser pocket, he starts off down the road towards the nearest cottage. Despite George's misgivings, Ron feels optimistic about today. He's hoping that maybe the owners bought the house from a Granger (a female Granger, if he's really lucky), or that maybe the previous owners did and the current ones have some knowledge of the house's history. He shouldn't get his hopes up too much, because old Andrew Bailey's cousin never saw anyone at the French Ministry of Magic, just the name 'Granger' on a document – a five-year-old document. But the fact that when Bailey's cousin asked around he was actually given an address for the Granger who signed the document is a good sign. Well, it's good enough for Ron, who's been looking for her for so long that he takes pretty much anything as a good sign.

The nearest cottage is number two: there is a large wooden '2' on the gate. He keeps walking.

Today, he has high hopes: he's hopeful that his policy of having given up the active search in favour of waiting for the evidence to come to him is finally going to pay off. The last time he went off on one of these investigations – sodding Romania it had led him to – was three years ago, and then he swore he'd never do it again. Well, not until someone came to him with information. Which, last week, someone had. And it was much more likely that Hermione had once lived in Ambleside than in Romania.

Well. That might not be true. She didn't leave him any clues – there wasn't even a note left, the day she vanished.

With a start, he realises that he's reached the place he's looking for. Number four. This is it.

He pushes at the wooden gate on which the old and cracked white paint is peeling off; it swings open noiselessly. Golden August sunlight illuminates the small front garden: withering roses sway as if breathed upon by the humid air, and a short tree, loaded with fat yellow crabapples, hangs over the path winding up to the small front door.

And after all that, the journey to Ambleside and the fuss with George and Andrew Bailey's cousin and all the last eighteen years, it only takes two seconds to find her, for the woman crouching in a flowerbed by the left wall of the little garden is one he recognises.

The mane of frizz is tied up in a ponytail.

'Hermione?'

In the second it takes her to turn around and straighten up, Ron realises two things: firstly, that this is not quite Hermione, and secondly, that this is because the girl in front of him can't be more than eighteen.

'I'm her daughter,' the girl says, dropping the Muggle coin she's just rescued from the flowerbed into her pocket and wiping her hands on her short denim skirt. 'Are you looking for her?'

He blinks. 'Her – her what?' He clears his throat quickly. 'Her daughter?'

'Daphne,' the girl says, eyeing him oddly.

Her voice is soft like northern water, Ron thinks.

'My mum's not here at the moment,' she says with narrowed eyes. 'Can I help you?'

'Daphne?'

Her expression shifts slightly as pity creeps in amongst the suspicion. 'Are you all right?'

Her accent swings haphazardly between cut-glass southern and a broad northern lilt. 'Your –' He shakes his head. 'Your mum is Hermione?'

'Er … yeah …'

'Erm – where is she?'

'France.' She pauses doubtfully. 'You're not from her work, are you?'

She says it _France_ like _ass_, not _France_ like _arse_.

'Um, Mister …?'

'Oh, right, er – no, I'm not from her work. Or France.' He clears his throat again. 'Ron. I'm Ron.'

Her only response is a blink.

'Has she ever mentioned me?'

Daphne shakes her head.

_Great. Almost two decades and not one mention._

'Um, er, Ron,' she says hesitantly – 'are you sure you've got the right person?'

'Are we talking abou—is this where Hermione Granger lives?'

She stares at him for a moment as if weighing up what to tell him. Then, she nods. 'Yeah.'

Despite himself, he can feel a grin breaking out on his face. 'This is it? This is –' He's speaking too fast – probably faster than he has in years, but he doesn't really care – 'Hermione Jean Granger lives here?'

Bemused, she nods.

'Hermione Jean Granger – the Hermione Granger who looks just like you?'

'Yeah, I suppose so.'

But at the girl's quiet puzzlement, he can feel his smile fading. 'And … And you're her daughter?'

She nods again.

This isn't quite right, he thinks. He isn't supposed to find this.

She still looks puzzled. And slightly worried.

'I'm – I'm an old friend,' he hastens to explain, rubbing his brow. 'We haven't spoken in a long time. I never even knew she'd had you.'

Daphne raises her eyebrows. 'You must go way back, then.'

He is unable to answer.

'Well …' Daphne says, glancing back at her cottage, 'she won't be back till Tuesday, but I can tell her you came over … You could leave some contact details? Or you could just come back next week …'

'I, er …' The idea of leaving his contact details fills him with the kind of inappropriate hysteria he feels sometimes at funerals. A ludicrous image of a piece of parchment saying _Ron Weasley – remember me? I'm living in London, let's catch up sometime!_ appears before his eyes; he shakes it aside. 'Sorry – where is she?'

'The –' She stops herself abruptly. 'Here ...' she starts, 'where'd you go to school?'

'Hogwarts,' he says, a little baffled.

She relaxes visibly. 'Oh, OK then,' she says. 'Wasn't sure if you were one of us. She's at the International Confederation of Wizards, in Versailles. That's where she works.'

'She works in France?' She – _Daphne_ – has to be at least fifteen, but – 'She leaves you here all by yourself?'

Daphne eyes him with annoyance. 'Well, I'm at Beauxbatons in the term, so it doesn't matter then, and in the summer she usually tries to do most of her work from home. But sometimes she has to go in to work, and it's easier if she stays at our flat in France. I can look after myself for a few days,' she adds coolly.

'Right – yeah, sorry, of course,' he says as, all of a sudden, he remembers the evidence that sent him here. 'So she is a politician, then? In France?'

'Not really a politician …' Daphne folds her arms and rests her hip against the garden wall. 'She's more one of the Confederation's people. She works in policy and research. The magical creatures department. She's a bit of a workaholic, that's why she goes in all the time, like this week. And she's – you know, she's so _noble_ about it,' Daphne adds with an eye-roll. 'There's always something that needs doing, always some clause of some Estonian law from 1412 that needs fully understanding so everyone knows that in the medieval period it was accepted that house-elves wore one mitten and one sock on every third Tuesday of the month, or whatever. But, you know, it's not just work, she's like that about everything – she doesn't trust anyone else to do anything the right way, she has to do it herself. Anyway,' she says with a shrug. 'She's not an official "warlock" –' She makes air-quotes with her fingers in the way teenagers have been doing since the dawn of time – 'or a "mugwump" or whatever, but she's hardly a secretary.'

Ron's hand seeks the wooden post of the gate behind him, and finding it, he grips it tightly.

Eighteen years and one month after she left, he's found her. He's found Hermione Granger.

'So, er,' says Daphne, standing back up and shifting her weight from one fraying trainer-clad foot to the other. 'How d'you know Mum?'

'Oh,' says Ron. 'Er …'

'Oh, let me guess!' Her eyes narrow. 'You're not from her work – in fact you had no idea what her job is …' She grins abruptly, places her palms on the low stone wall behind her and jumps up so that she's sitting on it. 'You're an ex-boyfriend.'

'Er – well, um, not rea—'

'It makes sense.' She looks at him steadily. 'It's the only explanation for why she wouldn't have told you that she had a child.'

His stomach twists unpleasantly. 'I … Um, well …'

'Ha! I knew it. Have you come to seek a reconciliation?' She raises her eyebrows and swings her legs. 'She's on the market, you know.'

'Do you make a habit of setting your mother up?'

'Course not; her life is her life.' She grins again and folds her arms; Ron notices a dimple in her cheek like George's and Charlie's and Mum's. 'But the thing about being a poor, fatherless thing is that I can have a little bit of fun with her lovelife. So,' she says, tucking a stray curl behind her ear, 'when did you two go out, then?'

'Oh, we didn't really –' He waves an arm around vaguely. 'Y'know – it wasn't really a case of –'

'Yeah, yeah, whatever,' she says. 'When was it?'

He sighs. 'Hogwarts.'

'Yeah, that would make sense,' agrees Daphne brightly. The chatty young woman in front of him is a marked difference to the guarded girl of five minutes ago. 'How old were you?'

'About eighteen,' he mumbles. 'Um –'

'Ooh, did you know Harry Potter?'

Ron is sure he's misheard her. 'You what?'

She shrugs. 'Well, Mum said she knew him vaguely, so …'

_Vaguely? _'Yeah, I, er, knew him,' says Ron. _Seriously, vaguely?_ 'I mean …' _Hang on – that twat gets a mention and I get nothing?_ 'What did your mum say about him?'

She shrugs again. 'Oh, just that she vaguely knew him. I mean, they weren't really friends, apparently, but still … it's kind of cool.'

Ron is at a loss. 'Yeah, cool.'

Daphne crosses her legs awkwardly.

Her body and face are remarkably like what Hermione once was, but her manner is very different; Ron thinks it must be the strangest experience he's had in eighteen years. As she tucks a thick, coarse curl of hair behind her ear again, he notices her nails are short and bitten. A plain black vest joins the short denim skirt and the ratty trainers to complete her outfit; grey bra straps cut into slightly-freckled shoulders. Although she isn't very tall, her arms and legs are pale and gangly, almost as if she's still in the middle of an uncomfortable growth spurt – but that can't be true because Ron is realising that she's older than he thought.

'So,' he says, swallowing, 'exactly how old are you, Daphne?'

'Seventeen. I'm just going into my last year at Beauxbatons.'

He focuses his gaze on the cottage behind her and hears himself ask, 'When are you eighteen?'

'The thirtieth of March.' Distantly, he can hear the grin in her voice. 'Is it a particularly good age?'

And 30th March minus nine is 30th June, and 30th June plus two weeks is ...

'Well, I'd – I'd best be off,' he says croakily with a blink. 'Thanks for … chatting to me …'

'No problem,' she says cheerfully. 'Here, do you … Do you want to come in?' She gestures back over her shoulder and shrugs. 'I could make us a pot of tea.'

She's friendly, thinks Ron. Friendly to strangers. But maybe it's just a northern thing; maybe what they say about friendly northerners is actually true. Harry and Ginny's kids would never invite a stranger in for tea. Then again, Harry and Ginny's kids are liable to suspect even close relatives of secretly being journalists.

'No,' he says, turning away quickly, ducking under the crabapple tree and going through the gate, 'no thanks, I'd best be off. Thanks, though.'

On the road, he turns back and takes a last look at the girl sitting on the garden wall. 'You …' He tries to smile. 'You look very like her.'

She smiles in a long-suffering way Ron recognises from Harry at about the same age. 'So I've been told.'

He swallows. 'You're very beautiful.'

Her face softens with surprise.

'Well, I'll be getting off then,' he says. 'Take care, all right?'

'Sure you don't want anything? A glass of water?'

'No, thanks.' He smiles again, but it hurts. 'Thanks for, you know, talking to me.' He looks up the road: it appears to be deserted. 'Do you reckon I could get away with Apparating?'

'Yeah, I'd say so.'

He looks at her. She shrugs. 'Here, Daphne …' he starts hesitantly.

'Yeah?'

'Don't tell your mum I dropped by.'

She raises her eyebrows.

'I – want to surprise her,' he lies, feeling a bit sick.

She looks at him appraisingly and smiles. 'All right.'

He takes a step along the road; then he turns back again. 'Daphne, is there a reason you don't go to Hogwarts?'

'Dunno.' She shrugs. 'I don't think my mum enjoyed it there much.'

He opens his mouth and shuts it again. He shrugs. 'Fair enough.'

He turns to go. He can't see this girl again, and so he knows, finally, that he's never going to see Hermione again, but for the first time in his life, he's all right with that. He doesn't know what's changed, but he suspects that it has to do with the fiery demand to know _why_ having been quenched.

'And anyway,' adds Daphne, just as he's about to go, 'I'm not sure I'd be happy living in a place that's run off slave labour.'

Ron stops. Then, he grins.

With a final check for Muggles, he takes his last look at the cottage and the defiant girl sitting on its garden wall. Then, with a _pop_, he's gone.

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It takes her until a good fifteen minutes after he's left.

She's filling up the kettle at the kitchen sink, glancing at the clock as she does so and thinking of how long she's got until she's got to meet Craig. She's thinking of how Craig will think the story about the rather odd redhead called Ron is funny; how she'll tell him about how he's an old boyfriend of her mum's who her mum hasn't seen since before she was born; how he and her mum used to go out when they were eighteen –

With a gasp, it hits her, and she drops the kettle in the sink.

'Fuck,' she says.

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Notes: This story can also be found on Livejournal, here.


	2. The Intervention

**II: The Intervention**

_George and Ginny want to talk to Ron._

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**APPLE CRUMBLE, APPLE TART**

**II: ****The Intervention****  
**

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Ron lets himself into The Burrow, hoping for some comfort from his childhood home, but halfway down the long, thin hall that connects the living room, kitchen and staircase that leads to the upper floors, he hears voices and he freezes.

'I can't believe you let him go.'

'Oh, come on, Ginny,' says George, 'you know what he's like when he goes off looking for her –'

'You could have stopped him,' she says.

'He's a grown man.'

'But it's so _unhealthy _…' She sounds frustrated. 'I thought he'd stopped this!'

'So did I.'

'He told Harry he'd given up –'

'Well he was lying, then.'

'God – it's just –' The noise of a chair scraping; a body falls into it with a _flump_. 'I wish he'd move _on_.'

Ron crosses to the kitchen door and pushes it open. 'Am I interrupting something?'

George is leaning against the kitchen counter, arms folded; Ginny is the one sitting at the table. Her expression is pitying. 'Oh, Ron.'

'What are you doing here?' he asks them both.

'Waiting for you, of course,' she answers.

Ron gives George a look.

'It's not my fault, little brother. She turned up at the shop looking for you. She tortured it out of me.'

'I wanted to ask you about the equipment list,' she explains. 'Do they really still need their own telescopes? Harry seems to think buying James gold everything is somehow going to make him do some work, but you know how Harry is with money –' She stops herself. 'Anyway. Sit down, Ron, and tell us about it.'

'How did you know I'd come here?' he asks, falling into the chair opposite Ginny's, because he's really too exhausted to do anything else.

'You always come here after one of those … jaunts,' says George. 'Shall I put the kettle on?'

'Yes, thanks – now,' says Ginny, turning her gaze to Ron. 'How was it?'

The nail on Ron's left thumb is longer than the nails on all the fingers on his left hand. He finds that sort of interesting. 'Oh, the usual.'

'Another blind alley, then?' asks Ginny with an uncharacteristically kind tone.

'Mmm-hmm.' His right thumbnail, however, is even longer than the left. Ron wonders if there's something wrong with his thumbs.

'That bad?'

He can't tell them anything, he knows. He _mustn't_ tell them anything. He stares at his nails. 'I – er …'

'Well?'

_Reveal nothing. You're not going back; you're not having anything to do with Hermione anymore. Keep quiet, Weasley._ 'Well … it was …'

'Oh _Ron_,' says Ginny with a tired annoyance – he knew the niceness wouldn't last – 'when are you going to learn that –'

_Say nothing say nothing _– 'Um – actually,' he hears himself saying, 'it wasn't such a waste of time, this time.'

'You have … a clue?' He chances a glance up: her eyebrows and mouth are etched with the deepest scepticism.

'Um,' he says. 'Well. Yeah. Sort of.'

'Like the "clue" that meant you spent two months searching Australia?' she asks. 'Or like the "clue" that sent you to Romania three years ago?'

'Oh for – Australia was, what, twelve years ago?' he snaps. 'And anyway –'

'Doesn't that _twelve years ago_ tell you something? I – I'm _sorry_, Ron, I _know_ we've said this before, but I do wonder when you're going to –'

'I've found her, all right? I've found her.'

_Shit._

Both are frozen: George holding the teapot and Ginny with her eyebrows somewhere up in her hair. 'What do you mean?' she asks.

_Sod it all to hell._ 'I met her daughter.'

'You _what_?' Ginny looks as if she fears for his mental health.

'Her name is Daphne,' Ron says calmly. 'Her mother, Hermione Jean Granger, works for the International Confederation of Wizards. They live in Ambleside.'

Slowly, George puts down the teapot and comes and sits down next to Ginny at the table. 'I think you're going to have to start from the beginning,' he says.

'Right,' says Ron. 'Right. I was in the Diagon Alley shop,' he nods at George, 'just checking on his books and things, seeing how everything was going, when old Andrew Bailey came in with his cousin to buy something for his cousin's kid. Bailey's the bloke that runs the apothecary,' he adds to Ginny, 'we've known him for ages, ever since I started working for George. Anyway, Bailey and his cousin were talking about the French Ministry, where the cousin – whose name is Patrick – had been for a while, doing some research for the British Ministry.

'We were talking about his research, and getting the various permissions to get into Ministry archives, and all that stuff, you know. And the cousin started going on about how there are a lot of English people at the French Ministry of Magic, and how he saw lots of English names about, and one of the names he mentioned was Granger. So,' he says loudly, ignoring the identical, reflexive eye-rolls of both Ginny and George, 'I asked him if he could remember where he saw the name, and if he could find anything out about this Granger, and this morning he came back with an address. Good thing I was at the shop again,' he adds darkly, looking at George, 'because if he'd given the address to this buffoon it would probably have been thrown in the fireplace. For my own good, naturally.'

'You wound me,' says George. 'Now I know you like to tell a story, Ron, but do get the fuck on with it.'

'I followed the address to a cottage in Ambleside, and ... there they were.'

'What do you mean?' asks George.

'A girl was at home,' says Ron. 'It was her daughter.'

'But …' starts Ginny. 'But … how do you _know_?'

'She was … Well, her surname, for a start,' says Ron. 'And … And, well, who she said her mother was! Hermione Jean Granger. And we talked _about_ her mother, who if she isn't Hermione is an exact clone. And …_ And_ the girl was a witch.'

'How d'you know?' asks George.

'She wouldn't talk to me until I told her what school I went to. Once I'd said the word "Hogwarts", she was fine.'

There is a silence. Ron thinks about how much better he could be explaining this.

'Listen,' he says. 'It –'

'Ron …' interrupts Ginny. 'Have you considered … that this could all be an … elaborate hoax? I mean, that would be horrible, it would be awful, but …' She tails off. 'I hate to be the one to say it …'

Ron shakes his head. 'It isn't a hoax. It's her daughter. Ginny, I swear it's the truth when I say I have never been so sure of anything in my entire life.'

She considers him steadily. 'What did you hear about Hermione that made you so certain?'

Ron thinks. 'They live in this little village that's tucked away from anywhere, but that's still busy, mainly with Muggle tourists. Remote, but not so small that they'd stick out. Most importantly, absolutely no wizarding community since some exceptionally zealous witch-hunts in the fifteen-hundreds … No one would recognise her. They live in this tiny cottage, and they have a flat in France, where Hermione lives when she's working. According to the daughter, she works for the International Confederation of Wizards.'

'The International Confederation?' asks Ginny. 'In Versailles?' She stares at him. 'What does she do?'

'Hold on a minute,' says George, looking suddenly alarmed. 'We don't know if it's really her, yet –'

'She makes policy,' says Ron. 'Reforms European law. Research, as well. I mean, I don't know exactly how it works …'

He tails off: Ginny has pressed her hands to her mouth. 'It could be her,' she says in a muffled voice.

'It is, Gin,' he says. 'It _is_.'

'But …' She chews her lower lip, her eyes wide. 'But … But wouldn't the daughter be at Hogwarts? Or – or is she too young?'

He shakes his head. 'Beauxbatons.'

'Beauxbatons?' Ginny looks stunned, and then she snorts and shakes her head. 'Hermione would never send her child to Beauxbatons. _Never_.'

'Gin, you said it yourself. She works in Versailles.'

'But hang on, if Hermione's been working for the International Confederation all this time, using her real name, then – wouldn't have we have _heard_ about it?' asks George sceptically.

'Maybe she Polyjuices herself or something –'

'She wouldn't need to,' says Ginny abruptly. 'I've been to the Confederation, once with Harry and once for an article – it's massive. The largest magical employer in Europe. And if she's backstage in policy reform, rather than debating things out in the central chambers, then the chances of her getting seen by a British witch or wizard, especially one who'd recognise her or who remembers her disappearance, are pretty remote ... Not many people will still think about her. So many people went missing in the war ...'

George still looks sceptical. 'None of this means this isn't a hoax. And we know she gave up magic, for a start –'

'She gave up magic eighteen years ago, she could have started again at any time quite easily –'

'All right,' says Ron rashly, 'all right, then: forget Hermione. Ginny – George – the _daughter_.' He is dimly aware that he is moving into dangerous waters, but they have to understand: they have to understand that this time it's real. 'You should have seen her. She was … She was the spitting image. She was … I can't explain it, she … She was exactly like _she_ was, back when – I almost grabbed her, I thought it _was _her …' He tries to focus his thoughts. 'She's – clever. Talkative, but clever – she didn't give anything away. She seemed to know that she had something to hide, even if she didn't know what it was she was hiding – well, I know I was just a random stranger, but –'

'Ron …' breaks in George.

'It's her daughter.' Ginny's face is torn; George still looks sceptical. 'It _is_. She – she asked me about Harry! When she found out I went to Hogwarts with Hermione, she asked me if I knew the great Harry Potter, because apparently, her mum once knew him "briefly".'

George raises his eyebrows. '"Briefly"?'

'Listen,' says Ron. 'Listen. Do you want proof? Daphne told me she was glad she didn't go to Hogwarts. You know why?'

Ginny shakes her head slowly.

'She said she wouldn't want to live in a place that's run off slave labour.'

There is a pause.

'We've got her,' breathes Ginny.

'Now, come on –'

'Shut up, George.' Her eyes are shining. 'We've got her!'

'I –' George rubs his brow. He fixes his gaze on Ron. 'How sure are you?'

'One hundred per cent. Look,' Ron says firmly, 'I know as well as you two do that I've been on a lot of wild goose-chases over the years, and I've – I've got my hopes up way too many times, but I wouldn't be telling you this if I wasn't absolutely certain.'

Ginny looks down at her hands; she appears to be examining her nails in the same way Ron had been earlier. 'Hermione Granger,' she says softly.

And rather than the hot defiance that filled him earlier at Ginny's prodding something cold and slippery spreads through his stomach.

He's told them. He's told them that he has found Hermione – how's he going to make them agree that they should now leave her alone without telling them her secret? He let himself talk too much, went off on a verbal ramble, as he is wont to do these days, and now he's told them everything short of the important thing, and he doesn't _want_ to tell them the important thing, because it's nothing to do with them, really; but if he doesn't they won't understand why he doesn't feel the necessity to see Hermione anymore …

_Fuck, I'm an idiot._

'What was the girl like, Ron?' asks Ginny quietly, jolting him out of his inner panic and back into The Burrow's kitchen.

'She …' he starts. He feels an unexpected and largely unhelpful grin tug at the corner of his mouth. 'She was – lovely. Had a tiny bit of a Geordie accent.'

'Geordies come from Newcastle, not Ambleside.'

'Shut up, George,' Ginny says again. 'Ambleside … That's up north, isn't it?'

'The Lake District,' says George. 'I've been on holiday there with Angelina and the kids, remember, a few years ago? Lots of mountains. We even spent a day in Ambleside ... It's about as north as you can go before hitting Scotland. Closer to Hogwarts than here.'

Ginny blows out her breath. 'So Hermione's married?'

Ron shakes his head. 'No.'

'Not at all? What about the girl's father?'

'He … didn't seem to be around,' Ron says carefully. 'They seemed to live alone.'

Ginny's eyes are far away. 'How old was the girl?'

_It's now or never_. He takes a breath far larger than necessary for the one word he is about to utter. 'Fifteen.'

'Fifteen?' Ginny cries. 'But you – you said – you made it sound like she was eleven! Fifteen?' She leaps out of her seat. 'That means – that means she would've had her only three years after she left!'

'That – that doesn't make much difference,' Ron says quickly, 'fifteen's only four years older than an eleven-year-old, and you've got one of those yourself –'

'That's different – I was twenty-four when I had James, and the war had been over seven years, and I was married to someone I'd known for – she would have been twenty! Or, or, I mean, twenty-one – but still! That's a big difference –'

'Ginny, sit _down _–'

'But what if – what if the father's someone we _know_?'

'Like who?' demands George, saving Ron from answering, which is a good thing, because he thinks if he tried to speak right now he would probably be sick. 'Ginny, she's practically been in hiding for twenty years. I think it's pretty unlikely she's been shacked up with Justin Finch-Fletchley.'

'Oh … I suppose you're right,' she says, deflating a little. She runs a hand through her hair. 'So … she wasn't there?'

'No,' says Ron. 'I only spoke to Daphne – the daughter. She said … She said Hermione's at work till Tuesday.'

Ginny starts to pace the room. Ron wishes she wouldn't. 'So she doesn't know we've found her …' she muses.

'Well, she will by Tuesday,' puts in George. 'I doubt Ron was that subtle in his questioning.'

'No –' says Ron with a start. 'No, I – I asked her to keep it a secret.'

'Oh, excellent, Ron,' says Ginny, stopping her pacing. 'She probably thinks you're a paedophile. Brilliant. We'll be lucky if the Muggle policemen don't come knocking.'

'I told her to not tell her mum so I could surprise her,' says Ron. 'I think she believed me.'

George makes a _might work _expression and shrugs; Ginny bites her lip. 'Why didn't you Obliviate her?' asks Ginny.

'Um,' says Ron. The truth is that it didn't occur to him. 'Well, she's not a child, if she'd fought back – I don't think all things considered a duel would have been appropriate –'

'It is also illegal to Obliviate another magical person without just cause,' puts in George. 'Which begs the question of how Harry Potter is running his department if his wife doesn't know this –'

'Yes, but –' Ginny stops. 'I know it's wrong, but in all honesty, I might have done it anyway. You've been looking for Hermione for so long, you wouldn't want her to get tipped off now and vanish before –'

'Honestly,' says Ron, 'it didn't occur to me. It wasn't like that. It wasn't an interrogation. It was just a ... chat.'

They look at each other. 'So, what are we going to do?' asks Ginny.

'Do?' asks Ron.

'I think the best thing is to go and see her,' says Ginny. 'I'll owl Harry right now –'

'What – no!' cries Ron.

'What?'

'We can't …' stutters Ron. 'We can't go to France.'

'Why on earth not?'

'Because –'

'He has a point,' says George. 'It might be better if we wait till she's back on home turf.'

'No, that's not what I mean! I mean –'

'Ron, are you all right?' asks George.

'Of course he's not all right!' snaps Ginny. 'Are you?'

'No, I'm bloody well not,' says Ron.

Ginny looks at him half-pityingly and half-expectantly.

'I just …' _Think._ 'I'm … It's a bit … overwhelming. Couldn't we … leave it a few days?'

'But –'

'Please, Ginny.'

Her excited eyes meet his tired ones. 'You want some time to think about it?'

'Yeah.' He swallows. 'Yeah, that would be good.'

She nods. 'All right, then. How about we leave it till next week?'

'Thanks,' he says, giving her a grateful smile.

'So do you want to owl Harry or should I?'

'No, I don't think …' If there's one person it's harder for Ron to lie to than Ginny these days, it's Harry. 'Ginny, _don't_. Not yet.'

Both Ginny and George stare at him.

'Couldn't we … leave that a couple of days, as well?'

'Wait, that's a good point,' says George, brow furrowed, and Ron wonders if he does in fact have a guardian angel. 'Isn't he on a mission?'

'Well, I don't know what he's been telling _you_,' says Ginny, 'but he's at a conference in Milan. He's not supposed to come home till Saturday night, but all the important stuff was at the beginning of the week, so he could probably get away with leaving two days early … Maybe if we said James is sick –'

'Why would he tell me he was on a mission?' asks George, affronted.

'Probably because the last conference he went to you sent him a dancing Howler?'

'Oh, yeah,' says George, an internal glow lighting up his face momentarily. 'Good times.'

'Ginny –' Ron starts.

'Ron … Is there anything else you want to tell us?' asks Ginny abruptly.

'Why?' he squeaks.

'Because …' she says slowly; his blood freezes. 'Because you're acting very odd. This _is_ Hermione, right? We're pretty sure?'

'Yes.'

'Then … why aren't you dancing round the garden naked?'

'Don't put ideas in his head.'

'Ron …' Ginny says again, ignoring George. 'Did you find out the reason she left?'

_Lie, Weasley. Lie for your life._ 'No, I didn't … I …' He takes a noticeably deep breath. 'All right, if you must know, I'm kind of … scared about that. I ... yeah. I don't really want to know the truth anymore. Happy now?'

Her lips twitch and he realizes she's smiling sadly: he breathes again. 'Oh, Ron,' she says. 'All right. Here's what we're going to do. We'll forget about it for the weekend, OK? No breathing a word to anyone. We'll have a nice Sunday lunch – you're still coming to that, aren't you?' she asks suddenly with her steely organizer's eyes, and he nods hastily. 'And then I'll – do you want to tell Harry?' Ron shakes his head. 'Fine, I'll tell Harry on Monday morning – he has a day off – and then we'll all sit down and work out what we're going to do. OK? George?'

'Sounds like a plan, sis.'

'OK then,' Ron says, trying to smile.

_Brilliant_, he thinks. _Only three days to get Ginny and George to forget this conversation ever happened._

::::::


	3. Flying Over Mountains

**III: Flying Over Mountains**

_Lunch with Ron's family is interrupted by a knock on the door._

::::::

**APPLE CRUMBLE, APPLE TART**

**III: ****Flying Over Mountains**

::::::

Sunday lunch at The Burrow: all are present except for the eldest Mr and Mrs Weasley, who have gone to visit Aunt Muriel at St Mungo's with promises to be back for the evening. Lunch for Bill, Fleur, Charlie, Percy, his wife Audrey, George, his wife Angelina (née Johnson), Ron, Ginny and Harry Potter, not to mention the small army of children, plus Teddy Lupin (whose eyes are liable to darken – literally – whenever he is referred to as one of the 'children'), is rarely an easy task, and this Sunday lunch is no exception. The meal is not served until four, and it is only at six in the evening, when the children have been away to play and come back to plead for their pudding, that any attempt to clear away the plates is undertaken.

Victoire is the only one of the Weasley offspring absent, which, when dirty plates are finally being magicked off the kitchen table, prompts Bill and Fleur to resume their argument of earlier on: family responsibilities versus the social needs of a young lady.

'Bill, you are being ridiculous – isn't 'e, Ginny?'

'Absolutely,' says Ginny, snatching a fork out of James's hand. 'Do _not _poke that thing in Albus's eye, for goodness' sake, James –'

'I just think that _sometimes_, family has to come first, and if we don't teach her some kind of responsibility –'

'She is only sixteen, Bill! _'Onestly_ –'

'I'm going to have both Ron _and_ Neville watching you, James – if you eat like that at Hogwarts, _I will know_.'

'Yeah, but what are you going to do about it?'

'Have you brought straight back home, that's what I'm going to do –'

'Oh, _Mum_ –'

'James, stop it,' says Harry. 'Now.'

'Stop _what_? All I was doing was _holding a fork_ –'

'Yeah, why would Victoire want to escape this lot?' asks George with a grin.

'The doorbell just went,' says Percy's eldest, Molly, without looking up from her book.

'I'll get it,' says Charlie, standing up.

'Harry, he _wasn't_ trying to poke Al in the eye,' entreats Bill's youngest, Louis, leaning over the table and sticking his elbow into the remains of his sister's lunch in his earnest defence of his cousin.

'I'm so glad I've missed all this,' laughs Teddy with a shake of his head.

'All of _what_?' asks James, snapping his head away from his parents and folding his arms.

'The onslaught of you babies on Hogwarts,' says Teddy, ruffling James's hair; Lily laughs delightedly as James scowls. 'Mol's the one who's going to have everyone saying "Are _they_ your cousins?" all the time.'

'Eurgh,' says Molly, looking up from her book with a wrinkled nose. 'I may have to change my na—'

'Well, well, well,' says Charlie, strolling back into the kitchen from the front hall with a grin. 'It seems that we have a lovely, young, _Hogwarts-age_ lady outside asking for her boyfriend! Oi, Ron – know anyone called _Daphne_?'

'Ron – you can't be –' Percy blusters as Harry and Bill laugh.

Ginny's face, opposite Ron, is frozen.

Slowly, Ron lowers his fork to his plate. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Ginny shoot a look at George, who, as Ron can tell from the stiff elbow rammed next to his in the cramped kitchen, is in a similar state of panic.

'I'll go and see what she wants,' says Ron, getting to his feet.

'I'm sure it's just about some holiday homework, or something,' says Ginny. 'Oh for goodness' sake, Harry – stop laughing, it's not that funny –'

Ron leaves them behind in the kitchen, walks down the hall, and opens the front door.

Standing on the cracked mud, which has been baked dry by the summer heat, is Daphne. She's wearing a baggy blue T-shirt and denim shorts and her brown curls are loose around her face.

'Hello,' he says.

'Oh, er, hi,' she says. 'Look, I'm sorry about – are you – was that your … brother?'

'Er – yeah, that was my brother Charlie …'

There is a silence in which she appears to examine his elbow.

'How did you get here?' he asks.

'Oh, we drove.' Without meeting his eyes, she jerks her thumb over her shoulder and gestures back up the path, to where a lanky boy is waiting, leaning against a beaten-up old car that's been parked next to Ron's dad's old garage. 'That's Craig. My boyfriend. I mean, it took us a while, and we had to go to London first, to see where you live, and I didn't have a surname or anything …'

'How did you find me?'

She shrugs. 'Asked at the Ministry of Magic. Annoyed people in corridors. Pretended I was doing a school project. It didn't take long, pretty quickly somebody said that they didn't know where you lived, but that you're one of Arthur Weasley's sons, and sent me here.'

'How long have you been dri—'

'You're my dad, aren't you,' she says, still staring at his elbow.

He doesn't answer.

She looks up and meets him with a very fixed, fierce gaze, and he knows immediately that this gaze belongs to her, is a gaze that has been noted as belonging to her by her friends – 'That expression is so Daphne', they probably say; but of course, the gaze isn't Daphne's, it isn't Daphne's at all – or, well, it belonged to another woman first.

'Aren't you?' she asks again.

'Daphne …' he tries, in the way that Harry sometimes says 'Now, James …'

'Yes?'

He doesn't know what to say.

Yes, he does.

'Yes.'

She lets out a calm, controlled breath. 'I thought so.'

He doesn't say anything.

'I mean, it took me a while,' she says. 'Until about ten minutes after you left. And then I spent most of yesterday trying to convince Craig to drive me. Because I can't Apparate yet, and I mean, I could have Floo'd the Ministry, and then you, I suppose, but I didn't think you would have liked me turning up in your fireplace much, and anyway, I wanted Craig to come, so we could talk … yeah.' Abruptly, she stops.

He tries again. 'Daphne –'

'How long have you known?' He thinks he recognises her obstinate look, as well – but this time not from Hermione.

'Since Thursday,' he says.

Her mouth opens, and then shuts. 'So you didn't know … about me?'

He shakes his head. 'Not in the slightest.'

There is a slightly awkward pause.

'Here,' says Ron. 'Shall we go and – do you want to go for a walk? Go to a café or something?'

'OK.' Her face brightens, possibly with relief. 'Let me just go and speak to –'

'He can come too, if you like,' Ron says awkwardly.

'Oh, no, it's all right, he'll just wander round the village or something, he doesn't mind –' She turns and half runs back down the beaten path to the car.

Ron goes back inside and down the hall. At the kitchen door, he steels himself, and pushing it open, he pops his head inside and says, 'Just going for a walk, see you all later –'

'Wait just one second!' cries Charlie.

'Would it be inappropriate to wolf-whistle?' grins Bill.

'School-age, Ron?' asks Harry with a raised eyebrow – half-joking, half-not.

'She's just someone I know – we're just going to … see you in a bit,' says Ron in the vaguest way possible, waving his hand, and then he disappears out of the kitchen.

As he shuts the door, he hears Ginny say, 'Percy, don't be so _sensationalist_, it'll be something to do with the school …'

'You sure, Ginny?' he hears Charlie ask. 'She's definitely his type. Long brown hair ...'

'Maybe she's blackmailing him,' says Bill's voice.

Ron smiles to himself, and heads for the front door.

::::::

'So,' says Daphne, twenty minutes later, sitting in a café at a table with a plastic red-and-white checked tablecloth. 'You met my mum when you were eleven.'

'Yes.'

'On the train to Hogwarts.'

'Yes.'

'But you didn't like her.'

Ron toys with a spoon. 'A bit of an understatement.'

'But then you knocked out a troll together, and you became best friends.'

'Yes.'

'But you didn't kiss her until you were eighteen.'

'Correct.'

'So … did you start going out before that?' She starts shredding one of the paper sachets of sugar.

'Not officially.'

'But unofficially –?'

He grins. 'You'd have to ask Harry about that.'

'Harry who?'

'Harry Potter.'

Her head snaps up. 'What?'

'Harry Potter – he's back at the house, if you want to talk to him,' says Ron, enjoying her shock. 'He _is_ married to my sister.'

'Your sister? Wait – Harry Potter's wife? Wasn't she a Quidditch player? Doesn't she commentate or something, now?' Her eyes narrow. '_That's_ your sister?'

'She writes for the _Prophet_. And, yes.' He nods. 'My sister … your aunt.'

'Wow.' She cocks her head slightly to the side. 'And so my famous uncle was … around, for all this?'

Ron laughs. 'Far more than he wanted to be. We were … We were friends, all three of us. Very close friends.'

She shakes her head. 'I'm sure she would have mentioned it.'

'But she did, didn't she?'

'She said she knew him _briefly_ – and that's only …' Daphne's eyes widen. 'That was only when I worked out the ages, and asked her if she was at school with him. She probably … She probably wouldn't ever have brought it up, otherwise.'

'Maybe not. It sounds like …' Ron is hesitant. 'Sounds like she tried to cut all of us out of her past. Didn't want her two lives connected.'

'Yeah.' Daphne's face darkens. 'She cut a lot out, all right.'

She turns the teaspoon that's lying on the table between their cups of coffee over in her fingers. A stray curl falls into her face, and she looks almost like an adult as she brushes it back behind her ear. 'So, your family – she knew them, as well?'

'Yeah, pretty well. Actually, really well – she stayed with us every … Well, because, with Harry …' Ron takes a deep breath. Daphne looks up; her expression is slightly concerned. 'I don't think I've – I haven't explained this very well,' says Ron. 'Harry was practically adopted by my family. He stayed with us every summer, my parents acted as his parents – sent him Christmas presents, washed his socks, you know – he didn't get on very well with his Muggle relatives, you see … And me and Hermione, we were everything he had. And so, yeah,' he finishes lamely. 'She was at my house a lot – all the time, basically – and she knew my family very well. If Harry was almost adopted by us, then … so was she.'

'And he ended up married to your sister?'

'Yeah.'

'So … was my mum friends with your sister? Is her – is it – Jenny Potter?'

'Ginny. Short for Ginevra.' Ron raises and lowers a shoulder. 'Yeah. Yeah, they were. I think – I mean, it could just have been the circumstances – but I always thought they were good friends. I always got the idea that Ginny was Hermione's best friend outside of me and Harry.'

'She's never mentioned any of these people,' says Daphne bitterly. 'Just Harry, the one time, and you.'

'Me?'

'Well, as in, "your father" – only when I asked her questions about you. What you were like. I knew you were an old Hogwarts boyfriend, you see – that's how I worked out that it was you.'

He smiles. 'I'm surprised you didn't guess straight away.'

She shrugs. 'I don't know … I suppose I just wasn't looking for you – for "my father" – you know? You sort of … You didn't fit the image I'd always pictured, so I suppose it just didn't register …'

He considers asking her what the father she's always pictured looks like, but decides that he would really rather not know. 'So when you asked her about me – what did she say?'

'She said you were funny.'

'Funny,' Ron echoes.

There is another silence, but Ron thinks it might be less awkward this time.

'Do you want to go back to the house?' he asks.

'Oh – I should be …'

'You could meet everyone. I mean, I'd have to do some explaining first, but I think they'd all like to meet you.'

'Even Harry Potter?'

'Especially the famous Harry Potter.' Even as Ron says it, he winces at the reminder of Harry's ignorance.

She smiles. 'All right, then.'

They get up, leave the café, and walk down Ottery St Catchpole's high street. The day has darkened: purplish clouds have spread across what was previously a blue sky and cloaked the sun.

'It's going to rain,' he says.

'Good,' she says, sticking her hands in her pockets. 'I'm sick of all of this sun. It's too hot.'

'It looks kind of ominous,' he says at the darkening skyline.

'Very apocalyptic,' she agrees, shooting him a sly look.

He catches it. 'There is not going to be an apocalypse.'

She raises her eyebrows. 'Really?'

'Really. Some of them know already, anyway. Sort of. It'll be all right.'

Neither of them speaks again until the pavement turns into a country lane and starts to wind upwards. 'So, you didn't tell me –' she starts. 'What happened next? You didn't kiss till – the final battle of the last war, did you say?'

'Oh, yeah – yeah, the last night of the war. In the middle of the battle.' He smiles. 'And then from the next day on we were "going out".'

'And then …?'

'Er, well … Er, then …'

'You did the deed, yeah, yeah, I get it,' she says, waving a hand. 'You can just skip those bits. I mean – when did she leave?'

'The thirteenth of July,' he says. 'Six weeks after the end of the war.'

'Without a word.'

'Yes.'

'And you never saw her again.'

'No.'

'What …' Her voice is quiet. 'What did you do? When you realised she was gone?'

'We …' This isn't going to be easy; Ron doesn't think about those days. 'We assumed, at first, that she'd been taken. Kidnapped, or worse, by un-captured Death Eaters, or Voldemort sympathisers. Maybe to demand a ransom from Harry – he'd inherited a lot of money. Or just as revenge. So we searched.'

She nods.

He tries to think of something else to say, but he can't. He'll … He'll tell her the rest of it some other time. 'What about – Craig? Do you want to go and find him?'

'No, he'll be all right for a bit,' she says unworriedly, before hastily adding, 'I'm not usually this uncaring, I swear, it's just that he understands what I'm doing down here, he doesn't mind being neglected for a couple of hours …'

'Does he go to Beauxbatons?'

'He's a Muggle.'

'Oh – yeah?' Ron hopes his surprise isn't evident on his face. 'Does he know about … us?'

'Yeah. Well, we've been going out for two years, we couldn't have, if I hadn't told him …' She looks off into the distance at the gathering storm clouds. 'I don't think he really gets it … I think he thinks it's sort of like Wicca, or something – I've never really done magic in front of him. I think it would freak him out.'

'So he lives near you?'

'Yeah. He lives in Ambleside – we went to Muggle primary school together. His parents run a B and B.'

'Are you seriously trying to tell me that you drove from the Lake District to London to Devon in a Muggle car in one day?'

She grins. 'Well, I might have helped the car along a bit. A discreet charm. And I think Craig knew, because he gave me a sort of funny look, but he didn't say anything.'

The Burrow has come into sight. Ron spies Craig's car, parked on the dirt track that winds past the house, and with a funny feeling in his stomach, he registers that it is turquoise.

'So … you said your family already knows about me?' she asks.

'What? Oh, er, not really – George and Ginny do, but they don't know that you're … that you're my daughter …'

'Who's George?'

'One of my brothers.'

'How many siblings have you got?

'Five.' The slightly guilty feeling he gets whenever he answers that question vanishes when she stops walking, apparently in shock, and he grins. 'Four brothers, one sister. I had another brother, but he was killed in the war.'

'Are they all there?'

'Yes. My parents might be back, as well.'

'Oh. Right. Um, OK then,' she says, starting to walk again.

'They won't – I mean, they can be a bit overwhelming, but they're all right – they won't bite.'

'I'm not scared,' she says, striding past the car and starting up towards the house. 'I'm just counting the Christmas presents I've been cheated out of.'

Ron laughs, but as they climb the three stone steps up to the front door, he touches her shoulder to stop her. 'All right, listen: right now, they have no idea what's going on, so I need to go in and explain a few things.' He glances up at the sky. 'Because it looks like it's about to rain, why don't you come in and wait in the living room – and I'll go into the kitchen and talk to them, yeah?'

'OK, then,' she says slowly. 'Is this – you're sure this is going to go all right?'

'Positive.'

Without waiting for an answer, he taps the front door with this wand, enters the hall, opens the door into the living room and unceremoniously pushes her inside.

'Ron?'

He turns around to see Ginny quietly slipping out of the kitchen and quickly shuts the door to the living room behind him.

'Was it her?' she asks.

'I … yeah.'

'Was she with …?'

'No, she was alone,' he says. 'Well, she was with her boyfriend, but … Listen, I need to speak to everyone – have you told Harry?'

'No, I meant to tonight, or tomorrow morning – I need to explain it to him properly, so he understands why I didn't tell him on –'

The kitchen door opens again and Harry appears.

'Ron, please, just a pint of milk – Mum asked me to get it earlier, I'm sorry I forgot to ask you before you left –' Ginny says, flapping her hands in an exasperated and slightly manic manner. 'I'd go, but James and Al are really acting up –'

She raises her eyebrows.

'Fine, fine, I'll get some milk,' he says, annoyed that Ginny's idea of a cunning subterfuge also manages to entail his doing all of her odd jobs.

'You're going to the shops?' asks Harry. 'Excellent, get us some cream. Apple pie's almost done.' He grins at Ron's expression. 'Good man. Knew I could rely on you.'

Sighing resignedly, Ron reaches into his pockets. 'I don't think I've got any Muggle money – oh, wait, what's this –' Even after all these years, Ron still has trouble with the paper money. He squints at the note, trying to find the number.

'It's a note, Ron, it'll do for a pint of milk and a pot of cream,' says Harry. 'And when you get back, you can tell us all about your date.' Now Harry's the one raising his eyebrows.

'Yeah, will do,' says Ron.

He pockets the note again and as he turns to leave the house hears Ginny say, 'Harry, there's something I need to tell you –'

He shuts the front door behind him, goes down the stone steps and stops. Seeing that Harry really should be told what's going on separately to everyone else, he realises that he has no option but to go shopping for the Potters. He hopes to God that Ginny noticed him shutting the living room door, realised what was going on, and manages to keep everyone away; or that James and Albus are acting up so much that everyone is sufficiently distracted. He hopes she gets on it with it and tells Harry what's going on quickly.

Then abruptly, he changes his mind: he can't leave his daughter hiding in the living room. Harry will just have to deal with it. He needs to talk to everyone right now, dairy products or no dairy products.

Just then, there is a _pop_, and a person appears about ten feet away from him. Her hair is short and she's wearing navy blue business robes. Her wand is clenched in her fist.

'Give me back my daughter,' says Hermione.

::::::

Notes: This story is also on Livejournal here (where it is updated a little bit faster).


	4. Once Upon a Time

**IV: Once Upon a Time**

_June, 1998._

::::::

**APPLE CRUMBLE, APPLE TART**

**IV**

**Once Upon a Time**

_June, 1998_

::::::

It's cold, much colder than it should be on the last day of June, but getting the Dementors rounded up hasn't been very successful, and the fogs are only just starting to lift. In a pre-war world, this sort of weather would only have been found on particularly wet and blustery days in April, but as Ron well knows, you can't have everything in life.

Standing in his back garden and staring into the distance, Hermione looks as if she could be a part of the nature surrounding them: Ron suspects that if he touched her hair, it would be damp with dew. She's huddled in a big woolly jumper, and he thinks she only refrained from wearing a scarf on principle. It isthe summer, technically.

'What are you doing out here?' he asks.

'I needed to get away from it all.' She wraps her arms around herself. 'Clear my head.'

'Yeah. It's …' He waves his arm around. 'Stuffy' doesn't seem like the right word. 'Claustrophobic, in there.'

'How did you know I was out here?'

'Saw you through the window. I have got eyes, you know.'

She smiles. 'I was hoping to blend in.'

'You do, sort of.'

She shoots him an enquiring look. It makes her look a bit like McGonagall.

'You look all …' he tries. 'Y'know. At one with nature. Like a tree person.'

'A tree person. How nice. An imp? A Bowtruckle?'

'You know what I mean,' he says as she rolls her eyes. 'Like you just grew out of the ground.'

She shakes her head, but she's smiling.

The wind buffets them; she hunches her shoulders up to her ears.

'Let's get out of here,' he says. She looks up at him in surprise as he offers her his hand. 'Come on.'

'But … where?' she asks as she slips her little cold hand into his bigger, freckled one, that sports a few golden hairs below the knuckles, and he feels a wave of protectiveness.

'Not far, just round here – we used to play up here, come on,' he says, tugging at her hand, and dragging her out of the garden and through the gate.

He expects her to complain, but she doesn't. They set off, past the orchard and down the hill. When they reach a stile, she lets him help her over it, and he feels only a momentary flash of regret that she isn't wearing a skirt.

They keep walking, hand in hand, until they reach a tree, and Ron stops. Hermione gives him a strange look.

'Wait – I think this might be it –'

'Might be what?' she asks.

'Where we used to come all the time … I don't really remember …'

'Does it matter?'

'Yeah, I wanted to show you this place … Me and Ginny used to play up here a lot, the year before I went to Hogwarts …'

He stares at the tree. There was a tree, he remembers – they used to climb it, and once they made hammocks – but there are hundreds of trees down here, all looking the same. Under the trees, the grass is long, lush and dew-soaked, with a few flowers dotted around.

'Oh, look, daisies!' Hermione cries gently, hand slipping out of his as she darts forward to pick one. 'I used to make daisy chains … Did you ever do that? Look, if you use your nail to slit a hole, then you can thread them together …'

'I'm a boy, Hermione,' he says, amused by her childlike fascination with the flowers in her hands, 'and we would probably have kicked Ginny out of the house if she'd ever expressed an interest in daisies.'

'Oh, I can't make it work, anyway,' she says in annoyance, tossing her mutilated daisies back into the grass. 'My fingers are too big now …'

He stares at the assortment of trees spread out before him.

'Ron?'

His head snaps round to see her staring at him and looking slightly concerned.

'It's just,' he huffs, 'I can't remember. I have this really clear picture, but none of it seems to fit – let's keep going, we'll find it eventually –'

'Ron,' she says softly, taking a step closer, 'let's stay here.'

'Huh?' Her lips are suddenly looking incredibly soft and inviting.

'Let's just … stay here, for a bit,' she whispers, and then she wraps her arms around his neck and kisses him.

Ron's kisses with Hermione are rarely _soft _or _gentle_ or _tender_ – he doesn't really understand how you can kiss anyone you're in love with like that. Their first kiss seemed to set the tempo, and now they always kiss like it's the last time, as if at any moment they're about to be interrupted – which, to be fair, they usually are. Before he knows it, he's backed her up against the tree, and her hands are in his hair.

He breaks away from her lips, breathing raggedly. '_God_, Hermione.'

'I know,' she whispers, nipping at his lower lip, making him groan and pull her closer to him.

'I miss you,' he murmurs into her hair.

And she doesn't say 'Why?' or 'But we see each other every day, silly'; what she whispers is, 'So do I,' and that'swhy, he thinks as he kisses her again, that'swhy he loves her.

She pulls out of his arms and drags him towards the grassy bit, off the dirt track. 'Come on, let's –'

'Let's …?' he asks, allowing himself to be dragged off into her beloved daisies. The earth beneath his feet is squelchy.

'Let's – I don't know –'

'Never go back?' he puts in hopefully.

She laughs, pulls him to her and kisses him again. He wraps his arms around her; after a second, he starts to feel her hands, tightly fisted into his jumper, dragging him down.

He follows her down until he finds himself sitting in a muddy meadow,He followHe

a Hermione entangled in his arms.

As she pulls him down into the long grass, her hands insistently tugging at his collar, she whispers, 'Please, Ron, let's – let's not go back – let's … Let's stay here forever …'

'Well,' he rasps, 'I reckon we've got a good half an hour.'

She giggles; then, she places a finger to his lips.

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Notes: I'm a tease, sorry! Next chapter soon! :) This story is also on Livejournal here: (where it is updated a little bit faster and where the formatting is nicer!).


	5. Sweethearts

**V: Sweethearts**

_The Burrow, present day. Nobody is happy. Some people shout; some people run away._

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Notes: Shit's about to start getting real, guys. And I'm gonna dedicate this chapter to Robert Galbraith, because

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**APPLE CRUMBLE, APPLE TART**

**V**

**Sweethearts**

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'Give me back my daughter.'

Ron stares at the thirty-six-year-old woman in navy blue business robes standing ten feet away from him on the dirt track leading up to his parents' house.

Behind him, there is a bang. He turns around: the front door has been thrown open, and there are Harry and Ginny, Ginny clutching onto her husband's arm in a failed attempt to keep him inside.

Ginny gasps. Harry's slack expression of shock doesn't change.

Ron turns back around.

'Give me back my daughter,' repeats Hermione, fists balled at her sides.

'Our daughter,' says Ron.

'He didn't kidnap me, Mum.' Ron spins around again to see Daphne brush past Harry and saunter down onto the parched grass, her arms folded.

Harry stares at Daphne with bulging eyes.

'Daphne?' shrieks Hermione.

'Hi, Mum.'

'How did you get here?'

'Drove.' Daphne's expression remains neutral, but she doesn't unfold her arms.

Hermione twists around and sees the turquoise car; the heel of her shoe makes a rasping noise against the dry earth. 'I should have known.' She turns back to face her daughter. 'Right, get Craig and then –'

'No.'

'Daphne, I'm warning you –'

'If you think I'm going _anywhere _with _you_ –!'

'Daphne –'

'I'm staying right here and there's nothing you can do about it, so –'

'Don't you _dare_, Daphne!'

Abruptly, Ron feels very weary.

'Daphne,' he says, touching her shoulder, 'maybe you should –'

'Don't touch her!' Hermione spits, eyes wild. 'Don't you – get your hands off her!'

Ron's hand falls from Daphne. The house and its surroundings are hushed.

He looks into Hermione's eyes properly. 'Don't _touch _her?'

Hermione's eyes meet his for a moment; then, she snaps them from his to Daphne. 'Come here,' she commands. 'We have to go.'

'No!' cries Daphne. 'You can't –'

'We are leaving, _now _–'

'Can't you hear me? No!' shrieks Daphne. 'What are you going to do, Mum, drag me?'

Hermione extends a hand. 'Come with me, Daphne,' she says calmly.

Re-folding her arms, Daphne shoots Hermione's outstretched hand a disparaging look. 'No. How many times do I have to say it?'

Hermione's arm falls.

'This is – these people are myfamily. _My _family, Mum. Were you ever going to deign to let me in on that?'

For a second, Hermione stares at her daughter; then, she rounds on Ron. 'I bet you think you've been so clever, I bet you're _proud_ of this – this – what did you do, come looking for her and tell her to –'

'How the _fuck_ was I supposed to go looking for her if I didn't know she existed?'

Hermione's mouth opens and closes.

'Is anyone going to explain what the _fuck_ is going on?' says a voice from behind them.

Ron flinches.

'Hello, Harry,' says Hermione tersely, without breaking her eye contact with Ron.

There is another silence, and then, very quietly: 'Hermione?'

'Harry –' Hermione's eyes flick to the house behind Ron and her speech falters.

Ron turns around: spilling onto the front steps, most of them with their mouths agape, are all of his siblings, their spouses and Teddy Lupin, with Harry and Ginny at the front.

Harry blinks owlishly; Ginny's mouth works.

Ron turns back to Hermione.

'I …' she falters again. Her gaze roves over the house.

Ron sticks his hands in his pockets. 'How did you know she was here?'

Hermione's head jerks slightly. She drags her eyes away from The Burrow and the assorted Weasleys. 'A friend of mine saw her. A diplomat. He said she was standing in the Atrium of the British Ministry, asking about a redheaded man.'

'Mum –'

'Right,' snaps Hermione, and with another shake of her head, she marches forwards and grabs her daughter's arm.

'Ow!' cries Daphne as she's dragged back towards the turquoise car. 'Get _off_, Mum, I'm not going anywhere –'

'Yes you _are_, Daphne, because I am, no matter what you may wish, still your _mother_ –'

'And I'm her father,' says Ron, and then he finds himself laughing hollowly. 'Or am I? Is that the problem?'

'Hi, Mrs Granger.'

Hermione spins around to face the bemused-looking teenage boy who's just emerged from the dirt track leading to the village. 'Craig,' she says with something slightly hysterical in her tone, 'Craig, be a dear and next time my daughter tries to convince you to drive her to London –'

'Leave him out of this!'

Hermione ignores Daphne and raises her wand: she shrinks Craig's car to the size of a toy, Summons it, catches it, opens up the huge black handbag hanging off her shoulder and drops it inside. 'You'll get it back, don't worry,' she says to a gobsmacked Craig as she rummages around in her bag.

'So I'm _not _her dad?' Ron finds himself asking loudly. 'I mean, Hermione, I may not be the cleverest of men, but I can do simple maths – count up to nine, you know?'

Hermione pulls a scrap of parchment from her handbag, crumples it into a ball and snaps the bag shut.

'So if it's not me, then who the hell _else_ were you sleeping with?' he shouts.

She points her wand at the crumpled ball of parchment with a shaking hand, and then spins around to face him with a wild look in her eyes. 'You _are _her bloody father, Ron Weasley. Are you happy now?'

He doesn't say anything, and for another moment, they stare into each other's faces.

'Craig, catch!' she shouts abruptly, tossing him the crumpled ball of parchment.

'No!' shrieks Daphne, but too late: on a reflex, the boy catches the ball, and with a flash of blue, he vanishes.

Daphne rounds on her mother. 'I can't _believe _you just did that, you absolute – _bitch_, you can't just Portkey people whenever you feel like i—'

Hermione grabs her daughter's arm and they vanish.

Ron walks forwards into the space where they stood. He sits down on the brown grass.

He hopes the others will go back inside.

After some time has passed, he gets up and turns back around to face the house. It is deserted: his wish has been granted.

Or so he thinks, until he enters the hall and finds Harry waiting for him.

Harry puts his hands in the pockets of his black robes and focuses on the wall behind Ron's head. 'How long have you known?'

'Three days,' says Ron. He shuts the front door behind him.

'Thursday?'

'Yes,' says Ron. 'I didn't know about – anything, until then.'

There is silence; still, Harry focuses on the wall.

'So you have a daughter.'

Ron closes his eyes and nods.

'I never even realised that you two … you know. Got … that far.'

'Only once. About two weeks before she left.'

'Why didn't you tell me?'

Ron opens his eyes and rubs his brow with his hand. 'Tell you what?' he asks tiredly.

'Three days ago. Why did you tell Ginny and not bother telling me?'

'Because – because Ginny was just _there_. She asked. I didn't … I didn't go looking for her; she was there and she was asking me all these questions, and … I didn't tell her –' he begins awkwardly. 'I only told her that I thought I'd found Hermione. I lied about – the child. Told Ginny she was younger than she actually is.'

He tries meeting Harry's eyes, but the other man looks away. Ron closes his again.

'Why didn't you tell me?' This time, Harry's voice is quiet.

Ron opens his eyes and takes a step forward. 'Harry – mate –'

'Don't.' Harry shakes his head like a dog. 'Just – don't.'

Before Ron can stop him, Harry's passed him, thrown the front door open and started off down the hill; the second he's out of the boundaries of the wards that protect the house, he Disapparates.

Behind Ron, the kitchen door bursts open; he turns to see Ginny. 'Where's Harry?'

Ron rubs at his face. 'Disapparated.'

Ginny swears under her breath. 'Do you know where to?'

'No idea.'

She runs a hand through her hair. '_F__uck_. I knew he'd –' She stops, as if only just noticing that it is Ron that she's speaking to. 'So. Daphne's yours, then?'

'Yes.'

'You're positive?'

He can feel something bitter twisting his lips. 'She sounded pretty positive, yeah.'

'You didn't think it worthwhile to let us know what was really going on?'

'It's a lot to take in. I'm her father.'

'Yeah, well, I wouldn't call myself an expert, but that was probably one of the worst displays of parenting ever seen.' She makes towards the open front door.

'I'd leave him alone, Ginny –'

'Don'ttry and tell me how to deal with my own husband, thanks.' She darts down the hill and Disapparates.

Ron shuts his eyes and leans his head against the wall. He has a pounding headache.

He can't do this. He doesn't know what it is, exactly, that he can't do, but he knows that he can't fucking do it.

'I can't fucking do this,' he says aloud.

'Ron?' He looks up: it's Teddy, popping his head around the kitchen door. 'The kitchen's empty now, if you want to come and sit down.'

Gratefully, Ron follows him through into the kitchen and sits down at the table. Bowls and spoons are set for pudding, and both the apple pie and a massive chocolate cherry trifle are sitting, untouched, in the middle, but the room is empty: looking through the open window out on to the back garden, Ron sees that Bill, Fleur, Charlie, Percy, Audrey, George and Angelina are huddled together with their heads bent, fervently nodding, while further out in the garden, the kids are playing.

'They didn't want you to overhear them,' says Teddy, following his gaze.

'What are they talking about?' asks Ron dully as Teddy sits down opposite him.

'Planning. Plotting.' Teddy starts spooning trifle into a bowl. 'Maybe even scheming.'

Ron's head sinks into his hands.

'I heard yours and Harry's argument.'

'Good for you.'

'Harry can be such a drama queen sometimes,' says Teddy.

Ron looks up: Teddy's digging into his helping of trifle. Once, he would have been stubbornly pleased for the support, even coming from an eighteen-year-old, but now is not once. He rubs his eyes. 'I would have been pissed off too, if I were him,' he admits.

'Oh fuck off,' says Teddy conversationally, 'he's being a child. You've got more reason to be pissed off.'

Ron's head sinks back into his hands.

'So what are you going to do?'

'Do?' Ron asks the table. 'What is there to do?'

'Dunno,' says Teddy. 'She was your girlfriend, right? And now she's had your kid? You've got to do _something_.'

'There's nothing to do but talk to her,' says Ron tiredly. 'We haven't seen each other since we were your age.'

After pulling an expression that demonstrates quite clearly how unfathomable he finds the concept of Ron as an eighteen-year-old, Teddy shrugs. 'Well, if you don't do something fast, they will.' He gestures with his shoulder out the window.

Ron follows the gesture, but his eyes slide onto the children. One of Bill and Fleur's daughters, Dominique, is holding one end of a Muggle skipping rope, and Percy's eldest, Molly, is holding the other end, while reading a book. Harry and Ginny's eight-year-old, Lily, is jumping in the middle as her cousins swing the rope. Ron can't hear the words of the adults, as they sound only like a vague buzzing – _Muffliato_ must have been cast – but the singing of the children, high and clear, carries over: '_Apple crumble, apple tart _...'

'What d'you think they're gonna do?' Ron asks Teddy, less out of interest and more just for something to say, because his mind is drifting far away now, away from the children he's watching and has always been envious of to the child he's had all along ...

'Who knows? I suppose Bill will want to go in wands blazing –'

'_Tell me the name of your sweetheart!_'

'Charlie might be a voice of reason, Percy will be all for getting the Ministry involved –'

'_A! B! C! D! E! F! G! H! _...'

'I've got to go after her,' says Ron abruptly. He stands up. 'I've got to go.'

Teddy grins. 'Good luck.'

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No fucking around with the Muggle bus system this time: Ron Apparates straight to the back of their cottage. He runs around the front, leaps over the wooden gate, ducks under the low-hanging crabapple tree and charges up to the front door. He raises a fist and bangs on it. 'Hermione,' he says loudly. No answer. He bangs again. 'HERMIONE!'

Just as he reaches for his wand the front door opens.

Hermione stares at him. Her face is very pale. She's changed into Muggle clothes: jeans and a white blouse. She looks so strange with her chin-length bob. 'What do you want, Ron?' she asks him stonily.

'What do I –?' he splutters.

With a cold, shuttered expression and a tiny shake of her head, she moves to shut the door, but Ron slams his fist against it and holds it open. Her eyes flash with rage. 'Don't make me –'

'I have no fucking doubt you could destroy me with a single flick of your wand and probably Obliviate my entire family along with it, but I don't bloody well care,' he says. 'Talk to me.'

'I don't want to talk to you,' she says. 'Not right now.'

'Well I'm sorry the timing isn't convenient for you, Hermione, but I don't really give a shit.' Ron hasn't sworn this much (out loud) in a long time and _fuck_ does it feel good. 'And anyway, that's bollocks, isn't it? You could've charmed this place so that I'd never find it again. But you haven't.'

'I have not hidden my house from you, Ron,' she hisses, 'because I have been too busy having a screaming match with my seventeen-year-old. Believe me, my lack of having searched for a Secret Keeper in the last half-hour is not an invitation.'

'Well there's nothing to be done for the moment then, is there?' He swallows. 'You were a decent human being once: talk to me.'

She opens her mouth to say something and then shuts it again. She purses her lips and looks to the side. Then her shoulders sag ever so slightly and she nods. She takes a step back and Ron enters her house.

Ron walks past her into her small, square hall. There's nothing in the room but a small wooden table with a Muggle land-phone on it. The walls are painted light blue. There are two faded wooden doors, one leading straight ahead of him and one to the left, and a rickety staircase leading upstairs. He takes a few steps forwards.

'Where do you think you're going?' Hermione barks.

He rounds on her. 'Am I supposed to just stand by the door?'

'Look, just –' She looks around herself almost frantically, as if she can't believe what's happening. Ron knows the feeling. 'In here,' she says, pushing open the door to their left. 'So she won't hear us.'

Ron follows her into what appears to be a living room. The walls are painted grey, this time, and peeling. There is a fireplace, two shabby sofas, a wooden table, pushed up against a wall, and bookcases, crammed with books. Threadbare curtains hang on either side of a large window that overlooks the front garden.

Hermione shuts the door and locks it with a wave of her wand: the lock clicks. Then she waves her wand in another gesture he knows: an Imperturbable.

She folds her arms and looks at him.

'So,' he says, sticking his hands in his pockets. He doesn't really know what to say, but he does know one thing: he's here for a story, and it had better be good. 'Shall we start at the beginning? How did you even get pregnant?'

'We had sex,' she says coolly. 'I hadn't known it was going to happen, and I'd read about the contraceptive charm but I hadn't practiced it – I performed it wrong.'

This is a reasonable explanation. He rubs his forehead. Where does he start? What does he say? All he wants to say is _Why?_ He takes a deep breath. He decides to use his professional skills: be calm, be authoritative. 'Where did you go?' he asks. 'Have you always lived here?'

'Eastern Europe.' Her face betrays nothing but tiredness. 'I went to eastern Europe.' She walks past him, over to the window overlooking her front garden. He turns around, but she has her back to him. 'I wandered around. It was a strange few months. I ended up giving birth in Romania.'

He laughs humourlessly. 'Romania?'

She looks back at him over her shoulder. 'Yes, what?'

'I looked for you there once. About three years ago. Ended up thinking it was a wild goose-chase at the time.'

She looks slightly taken aback. 'Well, yes, we were long gone by then.'

'So what then? After Daphne was born?'

She turns back to the window. 'More wandering ...' Her voice is distant. 'A lot of Russia ... When Daphne was four, we stopped in Bordeaux. We lived there for six years.'

'What did you do?'

'I worked in a café for a few months. When my French was good enough, I got a job at a Muggle town hall. It was a bureaucratic job. Muggle local government.'

'Then ...?'

'When we'd been living in France about a year, I think, a wizard appeared at the office where I was working. He recognised me for what I was quickly. I'd faked Muggle identity papers with magic but of course he noticed, being a wizard. It wasn't very complicated magic.

'He took me to lunch, and asked what I was doing working for Muggles. I suppose he suspected I was a war refugee, being British. He was the first magical person I'd spoken to in years, so I talked to him: I explained that after the war in England, I'd wanted to get away, and that I'd more-or-less given up magic. He was from the French Ministry – he offered me a job, working in his department. I think he felt sorry for me. I refused it. And then a few months later, he sent me an owl offering me an administrative job at the International Confederation, which is primarily located in –'

'Versailles,' said Ron. 'I know.'

'I took it,' she continues, unruffled. 'I've worked there ever since. When Daphne was almost ten, we moved to Ambleside. She spent a year and a half at the village primary school, and I worked at home, and then she went to Beauxbatons. We still have somewhere in Bordeaux – a flat. I stay there half the time.' She turns around to face him. 'There. That's it.' For the first time, there is some bite to her voice. 'That's where I've been.'

'How did you get away with it?' he demands. 'How didn't you get recognised by someone there?'

'When I first started working there, I Transfigured my appearance slightly. I used a different name. But after a while, I stopped ... bothering.' She shrugs. 'Nobody really cared. Nobody who works at the Confederation full-time is British, and I'm not a politician, I never come into contact with British diplomats. I help draft policy, mainly. And I always stay out of areas of British interest.' At his slightly incredulous expression, her voice takes on a haughty tone. 'The war was quite a while ago now. My name was never famous – not in Europe, anyway. And working there, I have a certain level of protection. Some people know who I am and keep my name from being bandied about, but like I said, it's not really necessary – people outside Britain don't really know who I am.'

He has forgotten what it's like trying to argue with someone who's always right. He swallows. 'Why did you leave?'

'Can't you understand?' she snaps. 'I was young. I was unexpectedly pregnant. I had just been through a very traumatic few years. I was overwhelmed with emotion. I –'

'"Needed to get away from it all"? "Clear your head" a bit?'

He is met with a blank look. 'Something like that, yes.'

She doesn't remember. His heart breaks.

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Notes: A NOTE: at this point my beta responded by demanding to know if this was IT, this was all we are going to get from Hermione – not the case! This isn't over yet! Also, if you would prefer to read this on Livejournal, where the formatting is a bit nicer, the link is on my profile page. BIG thank you to everyone reading this!


	6. Refraction

**VI: Refraction**

_More shouting, now with alcohol._

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**APPLE CRUMBLE, APPLE TART**

**VI**

**Refraction**

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"How like a mirror, too, her face. Impossible; for how many people did you know that refracted your own light to you? People were more often – he searched for a simile, found one in his work – torches, blazing away until they whiffed out. How rarely did other people's faces take of you and throw back to you your own expression, your own innermost trembling thought?"

– Ray Bradbury, _Fahrenheit 451_

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Daphne hovers on the upstairs landing until she hears the lock of the living room door click. Swinging her bag higher up onto her shoulder, she creeps down the stairs.

At the bottom, she turns towards the kitchen and stares at the door, weighing up the necessity of bringing a jacket.

'I ran away, once.'

With something close to a scream, she spins around to see Harry Potter leaning against the open front door.

Leaning against the front door rather more heavily than he should need to, with a bottle of Firewhiskey clinging to his fingertips.

'Of course,' Harry Potter says slowly, narrowing his eyes at her – his glasses slip to the end of his nose but he does not seem to notice – 'I took much more stuff with me.'

_Well_, she thinks. She shoots him a haughty stare and readjusts her bag. 'I'm not running away,' she says condescendingly. 'I'm going to stay at my boyfriend's.'

'Ah,' he says. He pushes his glasses up and takes another sip of his Firewhiskey.

She wonders if Ron failed to tell her that Harry Potter is an alcoholic. 'How did you get in here?' she asks.

'Front door was open.'

'And how did you find our house?'

'George told me. He had the address.'

George. One of Ron's brothers. 'Right. Well –'

'Is Ron here?'

'Yes,' she says.

He nods.

'They're in there.' She nods her head towards the locked living room door. He moves towards it; she shakes her head. 'It's locked.'

He stares sightlessly at the door. 'I need a drink.'

'You have a drink.'

He looks at the bottle in his hand. 'Yeah.'

'You know what?' she says on an impulse, because the thing is, she thinks, life is ridiculous at the moment, and drunk celebrities who you are sort-of related to don't wander into your house every day. Dropping her bag on the floor, she runs into the kitchen, opens the cupboard, pulls out another bottle of Firewhiskey, and runs back out to the hall. 'I'll join you.' She shows him the bottle.

He looks at her quizzically. 'How old are you, again?'

'Seventeen. Eighteen in March.' She sits down on the floorboards, her back to the living room door, and waves her free hand grandly across the space next to her. 'Have a seat.'

Slowly, he slides to the floor. 'March,' he says. 'So Hermione got pregnant in –'

'The end of June.'

'She vanished on the thirteenth of July,' he says.

There is a pause. Then, Daphne unscrews her bottle and clinks it against his. 'To us,' she says. 'And to the use of alcohol as a coping mechanism.'

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'How did you find me?' asks Hermione.

'A little bird gave me a hint,' snaps Ron.

She folds her arms again. 'I answered your questions.'

_Barely_. 'Someone I know mentioned English people working at – or having dealings with – the French Ministry. I asked him to look into it.'

'Why?'

'Because ...' He rubs the back of his neck. He shrugs. 'Because I never gave up.'

'Oh, don't be ridiculous,' she snaps. 'You put on the whole sentimental thing now that you've found out about Daphne but I find it very difficult to believe that you have spent the last two decades pining away, that you really still thought about me at all, until recent events –'

'You find it hard to believe?' he asks, incredulous. 'What, because I was so cold with you before you left? Didn't really care about you? I mean, yeah, you're right – we barely fucking knew each other, did we –'

'That's not what I meant! I mean that time has passed and things have changed and –'

'Hermione.' He takes a deep breath. 'Let's keep this civilised, yeah?'

She looks at him piercingly. 'So what happened to you? What have you – been up to?'

'I ...' He doesn't want to see her expression at what he's about to say, but he's going to have to tell her at some point. 'I teach. At Hogwarts. I'm a professor.'

She blinks.

'McGonagall sacked Binns, and because of everything I'd done by that point, I was sort of ... qualified. So she hired me. History of Magic professor.'

'What had you ... done? I mean, why were you – qualified?' She looks astonished, but she hasn't said anything cruel yet.

He puts his hands in his pockets and shrugs. He looks at the floor. 'When you left, I spent a long time looking for you. Full-time, I mean. I didn't do anything else, I didn't get a job. It was probably about ... a year, before I had to give up. I moved back to England, started working with George. I was in charge of his money, so he could pay more attention to the creative side of the business. But ...' He scuffs the toe of his shoe against the bare floorboards. 'I kept looking. I was always looking, at the beginning. Whenever I got a vague hint, I'd be off in pursuit, George be damned.

'I've been in a lot of the world's Ministries. I've spent a lot of time in dusty archives, looking at the records of magical people that different magical governments use ... It was all clutching at straws, really. I started to realise that eventually. Anyway, I ended up gathering a load of random, basically useless information, and some of that information was about people that go missing. Witches and wizards, mainly. I knew a lot about them ... It was a bit of an obsession ... A bit like my old Chocolate Frog cards ...' He scratches his head. 'Anyway, yeah, what happened, was that I read an interview with this bloke, a historian – Aelianus Higgins?'

She nods, slowly. 'Yes, I think I've heard of him. Does he write – is his interest magical Britain in the eighteenth century? Links with the Muggle Enlightenment?'

'Yeah. Him. He was publicising a new book, in an interview in the _Prophet_, and in it he started talking a little bit about the new book he'd just started writing, and what he was quoted as saying wasn't right. His facts were all muddled. So I, er, wrote to the _Prophet_ – not the sort of thing I'd do really, but as I said it'd become a bit of an obsession – and they passed my arsey letter on to Higgins, and he asked me for a drink, and he turned out to be a decent chap, and he asked for my help. This was about – what, nine years ago? And what happened was I ended up writing a few chapters for him. So I ended up as co-author. It was published about seven years ago. _Missing Witches_. And that's when McGonagall offered me the job.'

'Right,' she says.

'Yeah, so –' Ron scratches the back of his head again. He keeps his eyes on the floor. 'I know it's not what you'd have expected, is it, writing books, but it was only the one time, and like you said, things have changed.'

'But you – teaching? Teaching history?'

'Is it so odd?' he asks her, finally looking up. 'All it is is telling stories, and trying to explain why things happened the way they did. I – I never used to think about things like that, analytically, but now I do. And ... You know. I've always liked telling stories. And the kids – I like them. It's nice.'

There is silence. She worries her lips: she seems lost for words.

He decides to change the topic. 'Hermione – your parents.'

'What about them?'

'How exactly do they fit into all this?'

She pauses. 'I know you've seen them, Ron.'

'You moved them out of England,' he says. It is not a question. 'That was how I knew you were alive.'

'What do you mean?'

'When you vanished, obviously I asked them if they knew where you were, but they didn't have a clue, they seemed genuinely very baffled. Frightened. But then, I went back a few weeks later, to see if they'd heard anything, and they'd gone. Sold their house.' She does not say anything. 'We tracked them down to where they were living in the south of France. And they told me you'd been in contact, you were safe and well, but you didn't want to see me or anyone for a while and that you were probably going to give up magic. So that's when I knew.'

'Knew what?'

'That you were alive. And well. And that you'd left of your own free will.' He sticks his hands in his pockets again. 'You got them out there fast, didn't you?'

'It was quite easy,' she says quietly. 'They were still a bit disorientated from the charm I'd hidden them with in the war, England was a mess, they wanted to be away from anything magical themselves, they had the money to take early retirement, they'd always wanted to live in France …' She shrugs. 'It didn't take much persuading on my part.'

'They've got no pictures of you in their house. None.'

Hermione sighs. 'Yes they have. They're charmed. Only relatives can see them.'

'Oh.' It seems ridiculous that this has never occurred to him.

'My parents are protected by a fair few charms, actually.'

'In what way?'

'Have you ever tried to use magic or force against them?'

He doesn't say anything. He can remember instances of thinking, while standing in their house, pleading with them to just tell him where she was that he should just Imperius them and get the charade over with, but he'd never actually done it. He'd once brought a vial of Veritaserum – Harry had got hold of it for him – with the full intention of using it, but when he'd reached into his pocket for it, it had vanished. He'd assumed he'd lost it.

She smiles. 'So my charms held up, then.'

::::::

::::::

It doesn't take long for Daphne to tire of the drunken Harry Potter's attempts to make polite chit-chat. 'So,' she says, interrupting his question about her career prospects, 'apparently you grew up with my mum and dad.'

'Well, er,' says Harry Potter. Daphne can't be sure that it isn't just the booze, but he doesn't seem to be very eloquent. 'Not exactly.'

'Ron said his parents practically adopted both you and my mum.'

'Oh, yeah, well yeah, they basically did. But that was once we became friends, at Hogwarts. When we were eleven. Before that I lived with my Muggle relatives. The Weasleys are a good ... people. Good people. A good family.' He takes another swig of his Firewhiskey.

Daphne does the same. She can feel it, a little bit; she can feel a slight slur in her movements. 'I wish I'd grown up knowing them.'

'I grew up not knowing my parents, you know,' says Harry abruptly, as if he's just realised.

'Yeah, I know, it's not that abnormal, I'm not complaining about not knowing my dad, I know loads of people grow up like that, and I've had it quite easy compared to some –'

'No,' says Harry, cutting her off. 'It's shit.' He leans his head back on the locked living-room door and closes his eyes. 'It's shit. Really shit.'

'I never really wanted to know him,' says Daphne, staring at her bottle. 'Mum gave me the impression he knew about me but had never been interested, so I thought, why bother? If he doesn't give a shit then why should I? I didn't realise how much actually seeing him, the actual man, standing in front of me, would change that. And, realising that he never even knew I existed, and sort of thinking about how it's not just a man but a whole family I've missed out on – I don't know.' She takes another swig.

Harry opens his eyes and looks at her. 'Hermione told you Ron abandoned her?'

'Yeah,' says Daphne. 'She said he didn't want to know.'

He lets his head fall forwards; his messy fringe flops over his face. 'Fucking hell.'

'Yeah.'

'You realise he's been looking for her since she left?'

Daphne doesn't say anything.

'Did she ever mention him?' asks Harry.

'She answered any questions I had, but she didn't go into details. I knew she never wanted to talk about him, so I never asked much.'

'What did she tell you?'

'That they were at Hogwarts together. That he was Muggle-born – I suppose that's not true?' Harry shakes his head. 'That he was tall and thin. Funny. Clever but an idiot at the same time.'

'Why Muggle-born?' asks Harry.

'I suppose so I wouldn't ask which family he was from ...'

'Did you realise it was him? When he showed up here on Thursday? Or did he tell you?'

'Neither. I didn't figure it out till he'd gone,' she says. 'He wasn't what I would have expected.'

'What were you expecting?'

'I don't know, but not that weird sad ginger man.'

Harry snorts with laughter. 'He would be horrified if he could hear that.'

'I don't mean sad in, like, a saddo way!' laughs Daphne. 'I just mean ... sad. Like what it actually means. Melancholy.'

The laughter fades from Harry's shoulders and his head falls forwards again. 'He wasn't like that before Hermione left.'

'Oh,' says Daphne.

Harry looks up at her through his fringe. 'Did she ever mention me?'

Despite the fact that he is the famous Harry Potter and a man of thirty-six, Daphne finds something about his expression painfully pitiful. 'Not ... voluntarily.' She swallows. 'When I realised that she would have been at Hogwarts with you, I asked her if she knew you. She said she knew you, but not well. I asked her what you were like ...'

'What did she say?'

'She sort of went quiet, and then she said, "He's a very, very brave man".' She grins.

Harry leans back against the door again. 'Brave,' he repeats. Then he shakes his head; the movement is reminiscent of a dog. 'This is miserable. Let's talk about something fun. What – what's Beauxbatons really like?'

::::::

::::::

'How did you find out?' asks Hermione.

'I told you, someone mentioned English people working at the French Ministry –'

'No, I mean – about Daphne.'

'Well when I got to your cottage, she was outside, and –'

'No, I know all this, I managed to gather what happened from her – how did you find out about her existence? That she was yours?'

'Well, it was pretty obvious, once she'd told me when her eighteenth birthday was.'

'So you came to see if she was yours?'

'No!' Ron is losing his patience. 'I didn't know she existed till I got here! I wasn't originally looking for _her_.'

'Oh,' she scoffs, 'as if you came looking just for me –'

'Do you find that so hard to believe? That I would hear that Hermione Granger, the same girl who disappeared without a word twenty years ago, might be living in Ambleside, so I go and have a look, thinking maybe, _just maybe_, this time it's really her … And instead I find … this … girl … And all I needed to do was ask when she was born. And I find out I'm a father.'

'You're not her father,' she says with a shaking voice.

'What do you mean?'

'I _mean_,' she bites out, 'you're _not_ her parent. You haven't raised her.'

'But biologically,' he barks. '_Am I her father_?'

'Yes,' she says quietly and unsteadily, her mouth twisted bitterly. 'What are you accusing me of? You think I was cheating on you? Five seconds after the war was over?'

'Oh, God, sorry,' he says throwing his hands up in the air, 'it's nothing to run off with someone's child, but sleeping around – God, no! Sin of all sins!'

'I didn't – I didn't –'

'You still don't bloody get it, do you?' Ron thunders. 'I looked everywhere for you! I have spent years of my life looking in every bloody nook and cranny, under every fucking rock on this fucking planet in an effort to find _you._ How don't you understand this? You vanished less than a month after the war! We assumed the worst! I thought you were dead! Raped, tortured and murdered, or driven insane like Neville's parents – that happened to them in the aftermath of the first war! Or that what they'd done to you was so terrible that it'd destroyed your memory, like Bertha Jorkins, remember her? And you'd been abandoned somewhere without a clue who you were or how to get back to the people who loved you ...'

He takes a deep breath, trying to calm himself, but the blood's pounding loud in his ears. 'Every day was some kind of new hell. I lived in constant hope and fear of hearing something. There was a nationwide search – I really cannot fucking _believe _that the International Confederation has sheltered someone the British Ministry's had on a missing persons list for years, but I suppose it's a law unto itself.'

'I'm a missing person, not a wanted person, so the Confederation has jurisdiction over national –'

'Then your parents vanished. By this point no one knew what to fucking think, but we found them quick – Bill and Fleur found them. And then Harry and I are in their living room in France, and they're standing in front of us, surrounded by boxes, still half-unpacked, telling us that you're _fine_, you're _safe and well_, you just don't want to see us for a bit. Oh, and that you're probably going to give up magic.

'Harry gave up then, but I didn't. I searched France, then Australia. Any place you had a connection to. It was all I did for a year. And after that, I had a job but I was still looking – if I had an idea, or got a vague hint, I couldn't rest till I'd followed it through.

'I've been everywhere. I've spent so much time in Australia, I was so convinced for ages that that's where you would have gone ... About three years ago I ended up in Bucharest, and when I gave up that time, I swore it was over and I'd never go looking for you again – not unless I had very good reason to, anyway. I'd made that promise to myself before, a hundred times, but that time I meant it. But when I heard your surname mentioned in connection to the French Ministry, I had to look – I hadn't even searched for it, it had basically been handed to me. And here we are.'

He stops, breathing heavily.

Hermione looks stricken. 'But –' she stammers. Then a muscle in her cheek moves and she seems to regain some of her composure. She jerks her head slightly, flicking her hair out of her eyes, and it's an old gesture that all of a sudden he remembers well: it slices through him. 'You make a good speech, Ron,' she says, slightly coldly, 'but there was no need to assume all that. There was no need to assume Death Eater involvement. It's not even very – logical.'

'Oh no, of course not!' he cries. 'Sorry, it makes so much more sense your way – _much_ more logical! Rather than when my best friend, my girlfriend, vanishes, assume immediately that she's been kidnapped by Death Eaters, I should _know_ that she's got pregnant and fucked off to Romania!'

'Oh for God's sake, Ron,' she snaps, 'don't try and – try and _guilt_ me over something that happened twenty years ago –'

'YOU ARE GUILTY!' he roars. 'I'm NOT trying to 'guilt' you, I don't need to, you RAN OFF WITH MY CHILD!'

'STOP shouting at me!' she cries. 'You have _no idea_, not a _clue_, what I was going through –'

'What you were "going through"? Doesn't really seem like this decision caused you more than about thirty seconds' thought from the sounds of it –'

'If you don't think–!' She stops. He notices that her fists are clenched at her sides. 'If you don't think – if you don't think – giving you up was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do, but every time I thought of what your face would look like when I told you what had happened it made it easier. I had to get away and make the decision by myself, because I wasn't sure – and also, I didn't even know if it would stick, even if I wanted it to. I realised I was pregnant so quickly, I was only two weeks gone. So I waited to see if I would miscarry, and tried to figure out if I wanted a baby. And when I realised that I was going to keep her, that my body was going to keep her, and that I actually wanted to keep her, I couldn't go back. I told my parents to tell you I was alive and well, but I couldn't go back. Don't you see how I couldn't do it?'

'No. No, I don't.'

They are both breathing heavily.

'I wanted to come back, you know,' she says. 'Of course I did. But I was so scared and so – pre-emptively angry about how you and everyone would react. The anger drove me away. And actually at first I was quite happy on my own. Later, I really wanted to come back – when I started doing magic again, and then when I moved back to England. But by then it had been so long, I had no idea what to do, and I had a whole new life by then. It seemed impossible.'

He searches wildly for the right thing to say, the right question to ask to bring this back to civility, to stop his heart and blood pounding, but only the one question, the same question, the only question that matters at all, presents itself: 'But _why_? Why _leave_? We could've –'

'Could have _what_?'

'We –' He stops. 'You were right,' he spits. 'I'm not her father. A father by definition raises a child. Changes nappies and cleans up scraped knees – parents. If this ends amicably, and me and her develop some kind of relationship, then what? She'll never see me as a dad. At most, I'll be like an uncle she's fond of. You've robbed me of parenthood. What had I done to deserve that? What –' The question of years and years and years forces its way to the front and expels itself: 'What did I _do_?'

'Nothing. You did nothing wrong.'

'Then why –' he starts. 'We could have sorted it, it would have been OK, surely.'

'No, it wouldn't have! It wouldn't have been OK, not for you! Ron – you'd have been horrified.'

He thinks about his eighteen-year-old self. She is right. 'All right, I probably would've been,' he says. 'But Hermione – I fucking well had a _right_ to be horrified. I was allowed to react any way I fucking well pleased. You still should've told me.'

'_No!_' she shrieks. 'You did not have a _right_ to be _horrified_ about the child that was growing in my body!'

He opens his mouth but he doesn't know what to say.

Hermione's chest heaves. Her eyes look wild. She looks mad. Maybe she is – maybe she always was.

Maybe, he thinks, they've said everything there is to say.

::::::

::::::

'And now,' says Daphne, 'and now _he'll _want to know in what ways I'm like him, and _she'll _say it's nothing, I'm not like him at all … And they'll just … They think I'm just an amalgamation of them, y'know? But I'm –' She pauses to burp. ''Scuse me – I am my own _person_, you know?'

'Yeah – yeah, I get it. I mean, I had this professor – who hated me, all because I looked like my dad.' Harry scowls at the bottle. 'But all along, he was in love with my mum …'

Daphne raises an eyebrow. 'I think you might be more fucked up than I am.'

'Here's to that,' says Harry, swaying forwards to clink his bottle against hers.

::::::

::::::

When Ginny can't take her family anymore, she excuses herself from the heated discussion at the kitchen table and slips away upstairs to check on the children.

This turns out to have been a good idea, for when she enters the twins' old room she finds that James, Albus and George's son Fred are all still awake and in the middle of a violent pillow fight. After shouting at them for a while and reminding them that bad behaviour is _not_ tolerated during family crises, she gives them ten minutes to have clean teeth, pyjamas on and the lights out; then, she goes next door into Percy's old room, opens the window and rests her elbows on the sill.

This is where she is sleeping tonight. George and Angelina are in Ron's old room and Lily and George's daughter Roxanne have been bedded down in hers. Why George is staying over, she is not sure, but when he heard her asking their Mum if she and the kids could stay the night, he said, 'Oh, make beds up for us four as well, then. We wouldn't want to miss all the fun,' and Charlie agreed rapidly with the sentiment, and she hugged them both fiercely for being exactly the same as they always have been.

She contemplates asking Charlie if he wants to sleep in Percy's old room with her, rather than in his old room, but she decides against it. She needs some space.

After fifteen minutes, she goes to check on the boys, and although she hears hushed giggling, the room is dark and the bathroom a mess, so with a 'Shh' and a 'Night night' to the door, she pads her way down the stairs to Lily and Roxanne.

Quietly pushing the door of her old bedroom open, she is relieved to find both the girls in bed. Roxanne is breathing deeply and easily, but on the other side of the dark room Lily's eyes open blearily at the sudden invasion of light.

Shutting the door behind her and creeping across the creaky floorboards, Ginny goes and sits on the edge of her youngest's bed. 'Can't you sleep?' she whispers.

'I'm not very tired.'

Ginny smoothes Lily's hair.

'It's not _fair_. All the grown-ups are still downstairs. I want to stay up and talk.'

'They're talking about Hermione. It's not very interesting.'

'The lady who came and caused the big – the big –' She breaks off to yawn. 'The big thing?'

'Yes,' says Ginny with a smile. 'That lady.'

'I don't get why it's so exciting, and why we get to stay over with Fred 'nd Roxanne,' Lily mumbles.

'Because we haven't seen Hermione in a long time. And because Uncle Ron's been looking for her for a very long time. Since before you were born.'

'It feels exciting,' Lily murmurs. 'Where did Ron go?'

'After Hermione, we think.'

'What about Dad?'

Ginny swallows. 'Daddy's in a bit of a strop, pet. He'll cheer up and come back.'

'He's missing all the fun,' Lily says into her pillow.

'It _is_ a bit of an adventure, isn't?'

'Like the adventures you used to have with Daddy,' Lily says, too close to sleep to notice the grave slip-up in her choice of title to bestow upon her father.

Yes,' says Ginny far too cheerily, 'just like the adventures I used to have with Daddy.'

'Mummy,' whispers Lily sleepily as she snuggles down into her pillow. 'Mummy, why are we staying here?'

'Because –' says Ginny; her throat catches. She clears it. 'Because Mummy needs to be with some other people, right now. It's difficult to have adventures by yourself,' she whispers, soothing her daughter's brow.

'When will Daddy come back?'

'Darling,' Ginny whispers, 'Mummy and Daddy fight sometimes; you know that. But we always make up. Don't worry.'

'M'not worried,' Lily whispers unperturbedly as her eyes close. 'Al's the one that worries, not me.'

Ginny sits still with her hand on her daughter's forehead. She doesn't move for a very long time.

::::::

::::::

Ron searches for something to say. 'You've cut your hair.'

'Yes,' says Hermione.

He shakes his head. 'Never thought I'd see you with short hair.'

'How many thirty-six-year-old women do you see with long hair?'

He thinks of Ginny's shoulder-length cut. He remembers Harry's face the day she cut it.

He walks over to the window.

::::::

::::::

'Here –' Harry pauses and turns bewildered eyes from the bottom of his bottle to Daphne. 'I've run out.'

'Have some of mine,' she says, swinging her bottle with her wrist.

'Brilliant.' He leans forward, putting his weight on his other arm as he reaches for her hand to grab the bottle.

His hand closes over it and she turns towards him with a laugh half-formed on her lips, her curls bouncing. When she sees how close his face is, the laugh dies. Her frightened gaze darts from his lips to his eyes and back again.

Then, with a quick movement, she ducks her head forwards and her lips meet his. After a moment, Harry starts to kiss her back.

::::::

::::::

Finally, it is raining: grey sleet drives into the earth, falling from dark, oppressive clouds. The entire landscape is a soggy grey colour.

'It's raining,' he says.

'Yes,' says Hermione from right behind him, making him jump.

He turns around quickly to see if she's got a kitchen knife in her hand, but it's only Hermione: Hermione with brown curls framing her face and empty hands and two small lines, one for each anguish-filled eye.

'Ron …' she starts. 'I didn't mean for this … I didn't want …'

Her hands start to knot themselves together, and without thinking, he covers them with his.

Tears are sliding their way down her cheeks again. 'I didn't want this to happen …' she whispers, squeezing her eyes shut.

'Didn't want what? Me to find out?'

'Any of it. I didn't want – oh, Ron …'

'Hermione –'

'Why did you have to find out?' she chokes out through miserable sobs that wrench at his heart sickeningly, her body shaking, her breathing coming in gasps. 'Why –'

'Hermione, don't … _Please_ …' His hands move spasmodically to her shoulders, to her arms, to her neck, cheeks and jaw, but her crying continues; the sobs rack her body and the hot tears keep pushing their way out from her shut eyelids. He tries to wipe them off her face as they soak his fingers, but his efforts are of no use. 'Hermione …' he whispers, and then, shaking thumbs still on her jaw, he kisses her.

He kisses her once on her lips, softly and sweetly. Then, he kisses her again and her lips move to meet his; a salty mouth pushes against his own with questing, desperate need, and his body thrills with the recognition that in that moment, in that place, another body is feeling and wanting the exact same things –

His hands move down to her lower back and pull her towards him; her arms wrap around his neck tightly. They stagger sideways towards the wall.

'No,' she gasps, breaking away; before he can apologise – or stubbornly refuse to apologise, he hasn't decided which, yet – she grabs his shirt, drags him over to the beaten-up sofa and sits down on it, commanding him to join her with an authoritative tug.

For a second, they look at each other, hovering with indecision – then she launches herself into his arms and onto his lap and twists her hands into his hair.

'Ron,' she breathes against his lips as the rain pounds against the window and onto the roof and the sofa sags underneath them and her tears glitter in the half-light. Then she is the one kissing him: her feverish lips meet his, her spine arches and her body presses up against his chest. His hands smooth over her back as he kisses and clings tightly to the warm, solid, breathing vision of his adolescence. 'It's just … until the storm's over,' she whispers.

'Until the storm's over,' he murmurs, and together, they sink down onto the sofa.

::::::

::::::


	7. Rain

**Part VII: Rain**

_It's time for Ron and Hermione to face the world, but before the world, there's Harry and Daphne._

::::::

::::::

**APPLE CRUMBLE, APPLE TART**

**VII**

**Rain**

::::::

::::::

Ron wakes in the early hours: he surmises that it is the early hours because there is a pale light coming from behind the thin blue curtains.

He twists around on the sofa. Hermione is sitting on the wooden table, wrapped haphazardly in an old grey dressing gown, legs swinging over the side and eyes focused on the closed curtains. Her slept-on hair looks like a fluffy halo of brown: it reminds him of the long-ago canaries.

'Hi,' he rasps.

She doesn't look at him. 'Good morning.'

He shifts himself up into a semi-sitting position. He notices that she's covered him with a tartan blanket, which is a good thing, because otherwise his state of undress might be a bit embarrassing. 'What time is it?'

'Four-thirty in the morning.'

'Ah.' He winces and stretches out his left arm.

'Go back to sleep, Ron.'

He stops stretching and looks at her, but her gaze remains on the window.

He lies back on the sofa and stares up at the ceiling.

He can hear the rain falling. It doesn't sound like drumbeats, as people sometimes describe the sound of rain; it is more the approach of a violent and badly organised army.

He doesn't speak, but he doesn't sleep.

::::::

::::::

'We need to talk about Daphne,' she says.

Her gaze is still on the window. The rain is still falling.

'What do you want to do?' Her voice is dead.

He lets the words rise between them like smoke.

'I mean,' she continues, looking down abruptly, and then, continuing in the brisk manner he remembers well, 'how do you want to see her? She has her own life; she's not going to leave Beauxbatons for Hogwarts, if that's what you're thinking – and she's too old for custody battles, now, but you have to – have to get to know her …'

Ron gets to his feet and slings the blanket around his hips like a towel. 'I got to know her a bit yesterday.' He makes his way over to the table, stepping over their discarded clothes, and sits down on the table next to Hermione; she twitches slightly, but doesn't move away. 'We chatted, a bit.'

'What about?'

'You. Me. Hogwarts. You know, all that stuff you left out.'

The silence stretches out for a very long time.

::::::

::::::

As the dawn breaks and filters into the little living room, her face looks soft and pensive; she looks younger.

'Have you been in love, since?' she asks.

He thinks back; dredging up the old memories feels very odd. 'I thought I was, once,' he says after a while. He tries to get as close to the truth as he can. 'About seven years ago. When I started at Hogwarts. In retrospect, I'm not sure.'

'Who was she?'

'Another professor. She taught Arithmancy. We were only together a year. She took a job at a school in America and we broke up. I thought about trying to make it work, you know, long-distance, but ... I didn't miss her much after she'd gone, so I just let it go.'

She nods solemnly.

'You?' he asks.

'Twice.'

He waits.

'I married one of them,' she says, apparently as an afterthought. Ron thinks it probably is an afterthought. 'Neither of them ... worked.'

'How long were you married?'

'Two years,' she says distantly. 'It ended about seven years ago.'

'What about the one you didn't marry?'

'That was ... three years ago. 2013.'

'What happened? With – your husband?'

'Onri –'

'_Who_?'

'My ex-husband. _Henry_,' she says, pronouncing it the English way, and shooting him a disparaging look more reminiscent of the usual Hermione. 'He was French.'

He shrugs. 'Fair enough; I'd divorce him.'

She shoots him another look before turning her attention back to the curtains. 'Henri had an affair.'

'Oh.'

'And I couldn't forgive him,' she says quietly. 'I wonder how he is … I haven't seen him since the divorce.'

'What about the other one?' asks Ron. 'When was that?'

'Three years ago, so about four years after the divorce.'

'Was he French too?'

'German,' says Hermione. 'I met them both at work.'

'Why did you break up?'

'Neither of us would compromise.' She pauses. 'I thought he would give things up for me that he … wasn't prepared to sacrifice.' Her lips twist themselves into a bitter smile. 'He had a wife.'

'He wouldn't leave her?'

'Not a chance.' After a second, she adds, 'You don't need to point out the irony.'

'Wasn't going to.'

'Well, not irony, really, more unpleasant coincidence, which is what people usually mean when they say irony –'

'What about Daphne?' he interrupts. He doesn't know what to do with his hands, so he rubs the back of his neck.

'The only person we've ever lived with was Henri,' says Hermione. 'They got on well. But when it was ending she asked what had happened, and I told her the truth … I don't think she's ever forgiven him. She never wanted to see him again, which I think he took quite hard. He was very fond of her. I've always …' She looks at her hands. 'I've always tried to tell her the truth, as much as possible, but I'm not sure if I did the right thing there. She was only ten.'

What would he have done? wonders Ron. He doesn't know. He's never raised a child.

::::::

::::::

'Why did you keep her?' he asks.

'I felt that I had to.'

'But –'

'I don't mean that I _had to _had to, I mean …' She gnaws her lower lip. 'I always thought if it happened to me, I'd have an abortion, no question. I was very principled about these things,' she adds with a rueful half-smile. 'I still am, of course. But I decided that I wanted to keep the baby ...

'I decided not to tell my parents because Mum would have started dropping "subtle" hints about abortion clinics. I suppose that's when I realised what it was that I wanted to do – maybe,' she falters, 'maybe the attitude that I thought my mum would take was the thing that mademe want to do what I did.'

'Rebellion against your mother.' He considers the proposal. 'Decisions have been made on worse things.'

She laughs bitterly. 'You know, if Daphne came to me and told me she was pregnant now, I'd probably book her straight into Mungo's for a termination. Does that make me a bad person?'

He considers this proposal, as well. _No you wouldn't_, he wants to say. But maybe she would. Instead, he says, 'I don't know.'

::::::

::::::

'Do you like her?' Hermione asks in a small voice.

He smiles. 'Yes, actually. She reminds me of –'

'Yes, I know,' she interrupts, with an exasperated shake of her head like a donkey with flies in its fringe, 'she's so like me, mannerisms and looks and everythi—'

'Actually, I was going to say me.'

She twists around to meet his gaze; her eyes are shining. 'Really?'

'Yeah. She doesn't know when to shut up.'

Hermione shifts around to face the window again, and for a second, Ron is sure that he must have imagined the glowing expression. 'That's true,' she says.

'Do you think she's like me?'

'Yes. Sometimes, alarmingly so. You've never seen her play chess.'

'She plays chess?'

'Very well. I taught her, but she got better than me very quickly.' Hermione looks at her hands, smiling a bit. 'She laughs like you, as well.'

Ron considers this. 'She doesn't seem to laugh that much.'

'No. No, she doesn't. Not enough.' She takes a tremulous breath. 'She's quite serious.'

'Like you.'

'Like me.'

Silence falls.

'Her boyfriend makes her laugh,' says Hermione.

'Well,' says Ron. 'Well, I suppose that's all right.'

'I'm glad he does. It means that it's not my job.'

'I still don't like the idea of her having boyfriends,' says Ron. He's trying to make her smile, but it's not working.

'Sometimes, I don't like hearing her laugh,' Hermione says quietly.

Her hand edges its way along the table to nudge at his fingertips. He clasps it tightly, and together they sit on the table and listen to the rain in silence.

::::::

::::::

A while later, Hermione says, 'Cup of tea?'

They stand, and, politely turning their backs on each other, dress. Hermione unlocks the door. They walk through the hall and into the kitchen, and stop: sitting at the table are Harry and Daphne. They are wearing the same clothes that they were yesterday. Daphne's face is slightly red and puffy; Ron wonders if she's been crying and feels a stab of guilt. Harry is sitting next to her, his body turned slightly towards hers, but he's staring at Ron and Hermione. He looks like shit.

The four of them look at each other.

'Hello,' says Hermione.

'Hermione?' says Harry.

Hermione just stares at him. She looks exhausted.

Ron rubs the back of his neck. 'Shall I make some tea?' Daphne looks up at him with a small smile that looks slightly amused; for a second she looks like Ginny.

Nobody says anything, but Ron is confident that tea is a good idea, so he crosses over to the kettle he can see sitting on the kitchen counter and fills it with water from the sink. As it fills up he looks back over his shoulder and sees Hermione sitting down slowly on to the chair opposite Harry. Neither she nor Daphne looks at each other.

Ron also takes in two near-empty Firewhiskey bottles on the kitchen table. Yes, he thinks. Tea was definitely an excellent idea.

He places the kettle on a hob, puts its lid on and taps it with his wand. It starts to hiss. He turns around and looks at the odd group at the table. He folds his arms.

He wonders if both the bottles of Firewhiskey were Harry's, or whether Daphne was involved. One is empty and one is half-full. Maybe it was half and half? So three quarters of a bottle each? That's a lot of Firewhiskey, especially for a seventeen-year-old. Ron feels a glow that he sometimes feels in lessons, or when the OWL and NEWT results come out, and realises that it is pride.

'Where've you been, Hermione?' asks Harry.

Hermione rubs her face. 'France, mostly.'

'Your daughter,' says Harry, nodding towards Daphne, 'tells me you work at the International Confederation.'

'Yes.'

'Disguised?'

'No. Just blending into the background. I am Policy and Legislative Officer for the Research Division of the Department for Europe-wide Magical Creatures. I don't represent a Ministry, I work for the Confederation only.'

'So you're politically neutral.'

'Officially, yes.'

'How long have you been there?'

'Twelve years.'

'And you're only a policy officer? Oh, of course,' says Harry. 'Promotion would have brought too much exposure.'

'Yes,' says Hermione.

'I thought you gave up magic.'

'I did for a bit. I barely used it for years. Six years. Then I met a wizard who offered me a job.'

Ron is starving. He wonders if it would be weird if he started cooking everyone a full English.

'When you started working at the Confederation, did you think about coming back?' asks Harry.

Ron turns around and starts opening cupboards. The first one is full of crockery.

'Yes, a little,' answers Hermione. 'But ... I thought I'd burnt my bridges.'

Ron tries the next one. It contains three packets of lentils, a bag of slightly mouldy-looking potatoes, and a box of teabags. He decides that breakfast appears to be off but at least tea is on. He goes back to the crockery cupboard and pulls out a teapot and four mugs.

'How long have you lived in England?' asks Harry.

The kettle has finished boiling. Ron starts making the tea.

'Seven years,' Ron hears Hermione say.

'In this house?' Harry asks.

'Yes. We moved here when my marriage broke up.'

Leaving the tea to brew, Ron turns around and catches Harry's expression of surprise.

'Who was your husband?' Harry asks.

'A French wizard.'

'Does he work at the Confederation?'

'He did. He doesn't anymore. I believe he now works at the Swiss Ministry.'

'Why the Lake District?' asks Harry after a moment.

'I missed England,' says Hermione. 'And it's remote.'

Ron can't be bothered to wait for the tea to brew anymore; he's getting desperate. He pours it, finds milk in the fridge that smells all right, adds a splash to each mug, and levitates all four mugs and the teapot over to the table. He sits down in the chair next to Hermione and opposite Daphne.

'Mum,' says Daphne. Hermione looks at her. It is the first time that she has spoken since Ron and Hermione entered the room. 'Ron said yesterday that you – that you were mixed up in the last war. Were you? How – how much? Was it because of ... Harry being your friend?'

Hermione nods. 'Yes.'

Harry is looking at Hermione. 'She doesn't know about the war?'

Hermione looks back at Harry. 'I wasn't exactly sure what I was supposed to tell her. What could I tell her about the war without mentioning ... you two?'

'But why didn't you want to talk about us?' asks Harry.

'Because ...' Hermione looks frustrated. 'Because I had left you behind – I had decided to leave you behind, because I had decided to have my baby and I didn't think anyone would understand or support me or even be happy for me, and once I had left you behind, I couldn't talk about you. It hurt too much.'

Harry opens his mouth, to ask more questions undoubtedly, but then he looks at them both and shuts it. Ron is glad he does. He knows that Harry doesn't understand, but there will be time for him to talk about everything with Hermione later; Ron is pretty certain that if Hermione has to explain herself again tonight she will shatter. And it is funny, because explain herself is what she did: Ron thinks he understands, now. Maybe.

Daphne turns to Ron. 'Ron, on Thursday when you showed up here. You weren't looking for me, were you? You were looking for Mum.'

Ron thinks. Thursday feels like a very long time ago. 'Yes.'

'But you realised, didn't you. You realised while you were talking to me. That's why you asked me when my birthday is.'

'Yes.'

'When you left – did you intend to come back?'

'I ...' Ron swallows. All three of them are staring at him.

'You didn't, did you,' states Daphne.

His daughter would make a good lawyer in the Wizengamot, thinks Ron. 'No,' he admits.

'Why?' asks Harry. His expression shows complete befuddlement.

Ron tries to explain. 'Because I finally understood why Hermione left – well, sort of. I could see what had prompted it. And because I didn't really see ... I mean, where did I fit in to that? What was done was done. I think I just thought the best thing to do was to leave them to it. It seemed too late for anything else. Way too late for anything. I mean, Daphne seemed ...' He shrugs. 'Happy.'

'You're nuts,' says Harry flatly. 'The pair of you are stark raving bonkers.'

Everyone stares at each other. Ron finally picks up his mug of tea and has a sip. It is bliss.

'Do you want to talk, Daphne?' asks Hermione quietly.

'No,' says Daphne. Then her expression softens. 'Well, yeah, maybe. Maybe later.'

Hermione nods.

'I need to speak to Craig,' says Daphne. She whips a Muggle mobile phone out of her pocket and starts tapping the screen with her thumbs. Suddenly, it seems to go slightly berserk: vibrating violently, it lets off a series of shrill bleeps and a few ominous-sounding clanks. She huffs. 'There are way too many magical people in this room,' she says, and getting up, she walks into the front hall and shuts the door behind her.

Harry is staring at the door she just went through. 'She texts him? Is that what they do now? What's wrong with an owl?'

'He's a Muggle,' says Hermione.

'Really?' asks Harry. 'I didn't realise ...'

'It does happen, you know,' she says.

'Does he know about us?' asks Harry.

'Sort of ...' says Hermione. Then she slides her head into her hands. 'I really should not have Shrunk his car.'

Ron hears himself laughing before he can catch himself. 'It was funny, though.'

'No, it was _not_,' Hermione says to the table, but Ron doesn't quite believe her. He catches Harry's eye and Harry grins at him and suddenly they could be thirteen again and at breakfast in the Great Hall. Ron can tell that Harry has had the same thought. Hermione looks up at them and they look back at her and Ron has a feeling that everyone is going to stop asking difficult questions now and just accept this situation for what it is: really fucking bizarre.

'I need a shower,' says Ron.

'So do I,' says Hermione.

Accidentally, Ron catches Harry's eye again. Harry's face is entirely impassive, but he is a lot less dense about this sort of stuff than he was the last time they were all in the same room.

'Do you want to use ours?' Hermione asks Ron. 'And you, Harry?'

'I'm all right,' says Harry.

'Ladies first,' says Ron.

Hermione doesn't protest. She stands up.

'Hermione –' says Harry.

She stops. 'Yes?'

'Did you really – when you left – what you told your parents –' He stops. She waits. 'When you left, your parents told us that you didn't want to see us again, and that you had quit magic. Was that true?'

'Yes,' she says.

'That's when I stopped looking for you,' says Harry. 'I was searching for you before that. Constantly.'

'Harry, it wasn't a test. I – I didn't mean to ...'

'Harry,' interrupts Ron. 'I'm sure Hermione won't disagree with me here when I say that you don't owe anyone an apology.'

'I do, though,' says Hermione quietly. 'Owe an apology.'

Ron looks at her. Maybe he is owed one, but he doesn't want to hear it. Hasn't he already heard it? He's not sure. 'Go and have a shower,' he says.

She smiles slightly and slips out of the kitchen and into the front hall. Ron listens to her going up the stairs. Distantly, he can hear Daphne on the phone.

'Ron,' says Harry.

Ron looks at him.

'Did you shag her?'

Ron doesn't know what to say.

Harry's eyes narrow behind his glasses. 'Ron, did you two shag?'

'Um,' says Ron.

'Oh my God,' says Harry. He sounds like one of Ron's second-years. 'Oh my God, you did. While I was consoling your crying child you were actually having sex –'

'Shh!' whispers Ron.

'Just you wait till I tell Ginny –'

'You know what, mate, you haven't exactly been behaving perfectly,' says Ron. Harry shuts his mouth abruptly. 'Who drank all this Firewhiskey?'

'About a bottle and half between us,' says Harry coolly.

Ron stares at the bottles. That is a lot of booze. 'How is she?'

After a pause, Harry says, 'Daphne thinks you two are making it all about yourselves when really it's about her.'

Ron rubs the back of his head. 'She's right.' He drinks some of his tea. It's going cold. 'What the hell am I going to do, Harry?'

Harry's head slides into his hands and his elbows rest themselves on the table. 'I don't have a clue,' he says.

When Hermione comes back in, dressed in clean Muggle clothes, they have barely moved: Harry's head is still in his hands. Ron is looking out the back window. Hermione sits back down and starts running one of her fingers around the rim of her mug.

'Well, then,' she says. 'Ron, do you want to shower?'

Harry looks up. He looks slightly green. That must be one hell of a hangover, Ron thinks. 'I need to go home,' Harry says. 'I need to see Ginny.'

'She's not happy with you,' says Ron. 'She was pretty bloody livid when you left yesterday.' Yesterday, he thinks. Sunday lunch at the Burrow was only yesterday.

'I should go,' says Harry.

'They might still be at The Burrow,' says Ron.

'Yeah, maybe,' says Harry. He looks like he's at a loss.

Ron looks at his watch. It's half past six. 'I reckon someone'll be up by now, after everything yesterday. I'll ask.' He draws his wand and quickly sends his Patronus off to The Burrow with the message. The little Jack Russell terrier takes a leap and flies through Hermione's kitchen wall and out into the early morning.

Hermione is staring at the table, tracing the whorls in the wood with her index finger. 'Ginny,' she says quietly. 'I need to see Ginny.'

Ron is taken aback. 'You want to see – the others? You want to see everyone?'

'I ...' Hermione's finger stops tracing patterns. 'I don't know.' She looks up at him. 'Why would anyone want to talk to me?'

'Are you serious?' Ron splutters. 'Of course they'll –'

'Not necessarily.'

'Yes they wi—'

'Ron,' she interrupts. 'They probably hate me, a bit, on behalf of – on behalf of you. But mainly, they probably just don't care that much. It was a long time ago. _I_ was a long time ago.'

'You seriously believe that Ginny doesn't care –'

'No, not Ginny. The others. It was – you know – eighteen years, Ron.'

This is such a fucking mess, thinks Ron. Because what exactly happens now? Big tearful reunions? His mother hugging Hermione and weeping all over her, delighted over the fact that not only did she vanish two decades ago and break everyone's hearts but that she also deprived Ron of knowing his daughter? From where Ron's sitting, it seems highly unlikely. He also has to concede that Hermione has a point: the last time anyone saw her was almost twenty years ago.

But on the other hand, then what? Hermione and Daphne just slink off back into hiding? That can't happen, either.

Hermione is wrong when she says that no one will want to see her, Ron decides. What may be a problem is that no one will know what to say to her.

Something silver and ghost-like shoots into the room; Hermione jumps. The Swedish Short-Snout (much smaller than life-size) stands on the table and speaks with Charlie's voice: 'We're all still here, most of us. Mum and Dad, George and Angelina, Ginny, me, the kids. Mum, Dad, me and Ginny are up. Trying to keep the kids in bed for a bit. Come round whenever. Don't think anyone's going to work today.' The dragon dissolves into nothing.

Hermione is staring. Ron wonders if she recognised Charlie's voice.

'Did you tell them I was with you?' asks Harry hoarsely.

Ron nods. Harry looks overwhelmingly relieved. His head sinks back into his hands.

And then Ron knows what the answer is: the bandage must be ripped off. The dragon must be faced. If no one knows what to say, well – he'll smooth it over. He is an adult. Hermione is the mother of his child and smoothing over awkward situations with his family is his responsibility. And if nothing else, it has to be done for Daphne.

He's faced worse, for fuck's sake.

'You should see everyone,' he says directly to Hermione. 'You should come to The Burrow. This morning.' Before she can object, he says it again, firmly. 'You're coming to the Burrow.'

But then she looks up and meets his eyes and the defiance Ron expected to see isn't there. Gently, she rests her head on one of her hands, her elbow on the table. There is a small, odd, almost bemused smile playing on her lips. Her eyes are soft. 'All right,' she says.

'All right?' He's taken aback again. 'Really?'

The smile turns into a grin. She looks deranged, but in a good way. 'Fuck it,' she says.

Harry bursts out laughing and Hermione starts to giggle. Ron just shakes his head, but he can feel himself grinning as well. He feels light-headed. 'Now?'

'No,' says Harry. 'I need to eat first.'

'There might be some cereal,' says Hermione weakly, 'and there's definitely some bread and butter somewhere –'

'Toast', says Ron, jumping up. 'I'll make toast.'

::::::

::::::

Ron unlocks the front door of The Burrow with a tap of his wand and walks into the front hall. Harry, Hermione and Daphne follow him in and quietly, Daphne shuts the front door behind her.

'Is that you, Ron?' calls Charlie from the kitchen.

'Yeah,' says Ron loudly. He looks back at Hermione and Daphne: they look terrified. He walks over to the door to the kitchen and pushes it open. The kitchen is empty apart from Charlie and Ginny, who are sitting at the table, dressed but looking a bit dishevelled. They appear to have just eaten breakfast – they, Ron notes with envy, appear to have had eggs – and they have been reading. Charlie is holding the _Daily Prophet_, Ginny a magazine.

Harry pushes past Ron and walks up to them. Ginny glances at him and looks back down at her magazine.

'I'm here,' says Harry.

Ron looks behind him: Hermione and Daphne are still standing in the hall, by the front door. Unsure of what to do, he walks into the middle of the kitchen. He wonders where everyone else is, and whether he should gather them and make some kind of announcement.

'You look like death warmed up,' Charlie says to Harry.

'I haven't slept yet,' Harry mumbles. He looks down at Ginny.

She makes a show of turning a page of her magazine without looking up. 'Your children are upstairs; you might want to go and tell them you're not dead.'

'Ginny – they're not –?'

'Worried? Actually, no, not particularly. They're used to you being away for work, or, you know, going off in a strop because things aren't going your way.'

'Ginny – I'm sorry. Really.'

'How are you?' she asks, still not looking up from her magazine.

'Tired,' he says, yawning. 'I can't wait to get to bed.'

'That's a shame, because you're sleeping on the sofa for the next week.'

'Oh, _Gin_ –'

'Don't even _think_ about –' She stops, eyes on the doorway.

Ron turns around: Hermione and Daphne have edged their way in.

'Oh – oh I didn't realise ...' starts Ginny.

'This is,' says Ron. He swallows. He can hear people coming down the stairs. 'This is our daughter. Daphne.'

The kitchen door opens again and in clatter George, Angelina and Ron's mum and dad.

'Ron!'

'Finally –'

'Ron, what on earth has been –'

'Everyone,' says Ron. Alarmingly, he find that he is using his professor voice, which is something that he never does with his family, and even more alarmingly, it works: they fall silent. 'This is my daughter, Daphne.'

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Notes: The next chapter will be the last.

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	8. The House Down South

**Part VIII: The House Down South**

_The final chapter: Ron introduces Daphne to his family, Mrs Weasley has an idea, Harry tries his best to hold it together, Daphne is in disbelief, and, finally, Ron considers his memories of Hermione._

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Notes: Sorry this is so late: my beta is on the other side of the world and then I was sitting on it for a while because I didn't want it to end. SORRY! I have enjoyed writing this A LOT. I must take a moment to praise my beta, excitedrainbow, for being wonderful and supportive. And everyone who has read and/or reviewed this – thank you so so much. And now, without further ado ...!

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**APPLE CRUMBLE, APPLE TART**

**VIII**

**The House Down South**

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'This is my daughter, Daphne.' Ron reaches out a hand to her and she steps forward; he takes hold of her sleeve and pulls her into the middle of the kitchen. 'She's seventeen. She was born a little after the war ended. She – her birth is the reason Hermione had to leave.'

No one says anything for a moment. Then Charlie puts down the _Prophet_, stands up and extends a hand. 'Hello, Daphne,' he says. 'I'm Charlie. We met yesterday, very briefly.'

'Oh,' says Daphne. She shakes his hand. 'Pleased to meet you.'

'This is George, and Angelina,' adds Charlie, pointing. 'And this is Ginny. And these are our parents, Arthur and Molly – your grandparents. There's also Bill and Fleur, and their children, and Percy, and his wife Audrey and their children, and our brother Fred, who died in the war. Fred was George's twin. And George and Angelina's kids and Harry and Ginny's are all upstairs.'

'Right,' she says.

'There will be a test,' adds George.

She looks shocked, but then she smiles.

Ron glances over at the door to the hall, but Hermione isn't there – then he sees that she has moved into a corner of the room, where she is standing with her arms folded.

'You all remember Hermione, don't you,' he hears himself say. His mouth is dry.

'Of course,' says Angelina.

'Nice to see you, Granger,' says George.

Hermione nods.

Ron glances at Harry and catches his eye. With an almost imperceptible movement of his shoulder, Harry indicates a shrug.

'So –' says Daphne abruptly. 'Did you – you were all at Hogwarts together?'

'Yes,' says George.

'Was it –' Daphne turns to face Hermione. 'Was it fun? Were you happy?'

There is a pause. Ron remembers what Daphne said about Hermione disliking Hogwarts. 'It was wonderful,' says Hermione quietly.

There is another silence. Then, Charlie claps his hands together. 'Right,' he says. 'I think I might go to Bill's and let them know what's happened, otherwise I'm sure they'll be round again in a minute. Should go to Percy's as well, I suppose, before he starts informing official bodies –'

'How about I make a pot of tea,' says George. 'Mum, Dad too, go on, you sit down and I'll make some tea –'

'Put some brandy in it –'

'Mum!' shouts a child from upstairs. Ron thinks it's George's son, Fred.

'Yes?' calls Angelina, moving towards the hall.

'Can we come down now?' calls Fred. 'Roxanne's crying because James keeps wiping his bogeys in her hair and Al shut his finger in a door!'

'Oh, for God's sake,' says Ginny, jumping to her feet.

'I'll go,' says Harry, touching her shoulder and following Angelina out of the room and up the stairs.

'Shell Cottage!' says Charlie, throwing Floo powder into the grate and jumping in after it.

Ron puts out a hand for Daphne and she moves slightly closer to him.

Then suddenly, Ron's mum jumps out of the chair George has just pushed her into. 'Oh, wait just a moment –'

'Mum, what –'

'Just a moment, I've just had a thought –!' She hurries out of the room and up the stairs.

'Right,' says Ron. 'Hermione, come and sit down –'

'No, thank you,' she says quickly. 'I was actually just wondering if – could I go and get some fresh air?' Quickly, she crosses the kitchen, fumbles with the back door, and steps out into the garden.

'OK,' says Ron, trying to restore order again. He's not sure whether he should go after Hermione or stay with Daphne. 'What I think would be best is –'

'You should probably go after Mum,' says Daphne. 'I think this is all a bit much.'

'Are you sure?' asks Ron. It's what he wants to do, but he feels that really he should stay with Daphne.

'Yeah.' Daphne grins at him. 'I'm fine.'

Ron needs no more encouragement. He crosses the kitchen and follows Hermione into the garden.

::::::

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Once Harry has calmed Albus down and told James off and shot Angelina an apologetic look, and Angelina has shrugged back at him while stroking Roxanne's hair and flicking out the bogeys, and the children have been forced to make up and shoved up into Ron's old room, and Teddy has been summoned for some urgent babysitting with the promise of twenty galleons if he shows up right this very second – once all this has taken place, Harry finds himself staggering down the The Burrow's rickety staircases, helping Mrs Weasley carry four huge unlabelled leather-bound books.

'Here,' says Mrs Weasley breathlessly, placing them all down onto the kitchen table rather heavily.

'Mum, what is –' starts George.

'Oh, Molly, that's not a bad idea,' says Mr Weasley.

'Yes,' says Mrs Weasley. Her eyes are bright and her face is flushed but she does seem slightly calmer than Harry was expecting. 'I thought the girl – Daphne – might – it might be helpful?'

'Yes, yes, of course,' says Mr Weasley, magicking the breakfast plates from the table and polishing his glasses.

'Mum, what –' starts Ginny. Then she turns to Harry. 'Are the kids OK? I saw Teddy saunter in and go upstairs – are we really paying him twenty galleons?'

'Er, he's demanding thirty now,' says Harry.

'Good lad,' says George. 'Harry, obviously we'll split it with you –'

'No, no, don't worry about it,' says Harry. He thinks he might pass out: nothing he's done as an Auror has ever been as draining as the last twenty-four hours. 'To be quite honest I'd give him fifty if he asked. As long as they stay quiet for an hour.'

'To be honest, we should send them into the garden,' says Angelina, 'but I think it's taken.' She nods towards the back window, and looking up, Harry sees Ron and Hermione standing next to each other, backs to the house. They aren't really moving; they don't even appear to be speaking to each other.

'Oh my God,' says Daphne.

As one, Harry, Ginny, George and Angelina look over: she has opened up one of the books and is staring. The books are full of photos.

'That's my mum, isn't it,' says Daphne, pointing, as they all crowd around her. 'And that's – that's Ron.'

Harry looks at the photo Daphne is pointing at. She's right: it is Ron and Hermione. They look incredibly young – perhaps thirteen or fourteen, he thinks. Hermione, hair everywhere, is beaming, her arms wrapped around Crookshanks. Ron has a protective hand over Scabbers, sitting on his shoulder. As Harry watches, Ron shoots Crookshanks a deeply mistrustful look.

A scrap of parchment has been stuck underneath the photo: in Mrs Weasley's handwriting, it says _Summer 1993_.

'I think that's the Leaky Cauldron,' says Ginny.

'I know when that was,' says Harry abruptly. 'That was the summer I blew up my aunt, and I ended up staying at the Leaky Cauldron, and you all came to stay with me for the last night of the summer – that was the day Hermione bought that cat.'

He considers telling Daphne that the rat in the picture is in fact the man who helped to murder his parents, but decides that that's probably a story for another time.

Daphne flips back a few pages, and there is a photo of the entire Weasley family standing outside a pyramid in Egypt. Then she flips back and back and suddenly they are in _August 1992_ and there is a picture of Harry himself and Ron in The Burrow's back garden: Ron is sitting on Harry's shoulders, holding one upside-down gnome in each hand and raising them up towards the sky in triumph. Harry is holding on to Ron's legs. They are both grinning madly. They must be twelve years old. As Harry watches, his younger self laughs gleefully.

'Why do you never get these out, Mum?' asks Ginny quietly.

'Oh, you know,' says Mrs Weasley, who has sat down at the table. 'They can make people quite ... emotional.'

Something in the background of the photo catches Harry's eye and he realises that there is someone hiding behind the tree in the background. As he watches, she appears again: a young girl with long red hair peeps around, and then vanishes.

He looks at the real Ginny and she catches his eye. She smiles at him, and amazingly, she looks a bit embarrassed. He grins back at her.

Daphne shuts the book and slides a different one out of the pile. She opens it up on to a picture of the whole Weasley family sitting at a long table, again in the back garden, and midway through a meal. Everyone is older here, and with a lurch, Harry sees Lupin and Tonks – he hasn't seen photos of them in years. He realises that this must have been taken in the middle of the war.

'When was this?' he asks. Lupin smiles at him and Tonks winks.

'Your seventeenth birthday,' says Ginny. 'Remember the cake?' As she says it, Harry sees himself, and the birthday cake sitting in front of him: shaped like a Snitch.

'Do you remember that man showing up?' asks Mr Weasley. 'What was his name? Scrimgeour?'

'He was such a chump,' says George.

Harry remembers Scrimgeour bringing him the Resurrection Stone in its guise of a Snitch. 'Well,' he says tiredly, 'he died defending us.'

Mrs Weasley gets up and starts to tidy the kitchen, and Mr Weasley walks over to the window. Harry glances at Ginny again: she, like her father, is watching Ron and Hermione. Harry copies them and sees that the pair have started to walk down towards the end of the garden.

Ginny looks at Harry again, and with a furtive glance around the room, and at Daphne – who is still engrossed in the photos – she looks at him again, this time with more intent. Her eyes flick to the window and back and she raises her eyebrows slightly.

Harry knows exactly what she means. He nods slightly.

Ginny's eyes widen.

'You what?' asks George, eyes flicking between Harry and Ginny. 'What are you two – ow!'

Angelina smiles serenely and removes her elbow from George's stomach.

'Is this them?' asks Daphne suddenly.

Once more, Harry, Ginny, George and Angelina crowd around the table.

It is a photo of people dancing on a golden dancefloor in The Burrow's back garden: there is a white canopy above them, supported by golden poles. They are dressed up and twirling each other around, while others sit at tables at the side of the photo, eating and drinking. Bottles of champagne float about, topping up people's glasses. Harry realises what it is: Bill and Fleur's wedding reception. Ron and Hermione are in the foreground, dancing together, Ron in dress robes and Hermione in a lilac dress and matching high heels, beaded handbag swinging off her arm. Hermione is smiling up at Ron. Hermione's hair is straighter than usual, but as Harry watches, Ron finds a stray curl and tucks it behind her ear.

'Oh, I remember that dress,' says Ginny.

'I remember that handbag,' says Harry.

Daphne shoots him a questioning look.

'That handbag kept me alive for a year,' says Harry. 'Right now it's got a tent, my underpants and a whole cauldronful of Polyjuice Potion in there.'

'You Polyjuiced into people?' Daphne asks. 'Who?'

'Have you ever heard of Bellatrix Lestrange?' he asks.

'Yes, of course – wait – you Polyjuiced into her?'

Harry grins. 'No. Your mum did.'

'I forgot about that!' laughs George.

'And Ron's mum killed her.' Harry glances at Mrs Weasley, but her head is bent over the washing up, which she is poking with her wand. He is not fooled, though; he knows that she's listening to every word.

Daphne is staring at him. 'But – but why did Mum – _why__?_'

'To rob Gringotts.'

Daphne stares at him, then stares back at the photo. 'No.' She shakes her head. 'No. That did nothappen.'

'Well, in all fairness, your mum was a bit rubbish at it. She kept saying please and thank you.' He shrugs. 'Still, it's one of only two successful robberies that Gringotts has ever had.'

'Gosh. No wonder we never go to Diagon Alley.' Daphne rubs her thumb over the picture, jostling the dancing figures – they swerve and twirl out of the way to avoid her. 'How does Gringotts feel about that, nowadays?'

'I've tried to keep it quiet. And Ron and Hermione did most of it, anyway. I was invisible.'

Daphne looks out of the window at the distant figures of Hermione and Ron. 'They used to _rob banks _together?'

'It was hardly a regular occurrence,' says George. 'And, sadly, it was probably the coolest thing Ron's ever done in his life.'

'I think I need to check on Teddy and the kids –' says Ginny, moving towards the hall.

'I'll go, Ginny –' Harry says quickly.

'No, it's all right.' Ginny vanishes into the hall and shuts the door behind her.

'And you know what,' says Daphne, 'Mum _never_ helps me straighten my hair, she's always telling me to "love my natural beauty"...'

'I would assume that one of the reasons you don't go to Diagon Alley is my fabulously successful franchise,' says George. 'Have you ever been in the Paris branch of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes?'

'Of course – oh!' Daphne's eyes widen. 'You're the Weasleys? The _Weasleys_ Weasleys?'

'Yes, we're the Weasleys,' says George. 'You're the Weasleys. I started the company with Fred, my twin. Ron was my bookkeeper, in the early days. He helped me expand into Europe. He still owns a twenty percent stake.'

'So Ron's rich?' asks Daphne.

'Yeah, he does all right,' laughs George. 'Though you wouldn't know it from his whole "shabby heartbroken professor" vibe.'

'George,' says Angelina, rolling her eyes. 'He can hardly dress the way you do at Hogwarts.'

'There's absolutely no need for those corduroy trousers and elbow patches, though.'

'I seriously can't believe this,' says Daphne, staring at the wedding reception photo again. 'No one at school is going to believe this. Mum's always banned Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes stuff from the house, I just thought that she was being a killjoy –'

'I'm going to help Ginny with the kids,' says Harry. 'I'll be right back.' Like Ginny, he slips into the hall and shuts the door behind him.

::::::

::::::

It doesn't take him long to find her. She is sitting on the bottom step of the stairs leading up to the third floor, elbows on her knees.

'Hi,' she says. 'I got up to Ron's room, but I could hear they were all fine, so I didn't interrupt. Came back down here.'

She offers him a small smile. She looks as exhausted as Harry feels.

The whole weight of everything is full and heavy in Harry's body. It is especially heavy in the backs of his knees and finally he can feel himself crumpling and, in fact, he seems to be crumpling physically: his back hits the wall and his knees give and he slides, slowly, to the floor.

They look at each other. 'Ginny,' he says. 'I am so sorry.'

She puts her head in one of her hands, elbow still rested on her knee. 'What happened?'

He knows that she doesn't know. She means, what happened last night. What happened after you stormed off. Not, did you snog a seventeen-year-old.

'I went home,' he says. She nods. 'I just wanted a drink, but I thought you'd follow me, so I left. I took the Firewhiskey –'

'I noticed.'

'But I went to a pub in Diagon Alley instead. The Mermaid and Manticore. I had a few drinks. Then I left. I drank some of the Firewhiskey. And then I decided to go to her house. I wanted to look at it. George had seen the address – he gave it to me before I left this house. So I went there, and the front door was open. I walked in. Daphne was there, in the front hall, on her own. She had a big bag with her, and I think I thought she was running away. Ron had already turned up, and he and Hermione were locked in the living room.

'Daphne and I sat down in the hall and ... drank a bit. We talked about a lot of stuff ... nonsense, really. She was very upset. Then at about five-thirty in the morning, Ron and Hermione emerged. They'd obviously been asleep. They looked very ... dishevelled. Ron was wearing the same clothes as yesterday. Then we all sat in the kitchen, Daphne vanished off somewhere, and the three of us talked. Ron sent his Patronus so we knew where everyone was – I wanted to go wherever you and the kids were – and then we came here.'

Slowly, Ginny gets up and comes and sits down on the floor next to Harry. 'And you really think something happened between them?'

'I know it did. Ron basically admitted it. They had sex.'

'God,' says Ginny.

'I know.'

'So – but –' She stops, seemingly at a loss. 'What on earth were they thinking?'

'I know!'

After a second, she says, 'It's sort of comforting that they're both still completely insane.'

She smiles at him again.

He wants to vomit.

'I have a confession to make,' he says.

'You drank the last of our Ogden's?'

'I kissed Daphne.'

There is a pause in time where everything hangs, temporarily suspended, and then Ginny lets out her breath in a sigh. Slowly, her head falls back to rest against the wall. 'You are a twat, Harry Potter.'

'I know.' His head falls forward and his hair cascades down to hide his eyes. 'I know.'

Seconds tick by. Harry listens to the sound of her steady breathing.

'What happened?' Ginny asks with a dull voice.

'We were drunk,' he starts.

He flinches at the look she shoots him.

'And – and we were sitting in the hall in Hermione's house, and Ron and Hermione were locked in the living room doing God-knows-what – and – and she kissed me! Shekissed me … I …'

'God, Harry.'

'I mean – I mean, I stopped her immediately –'

'After a good ten-minute snog with the seventeen-year-old, of course.'

'Gin! It … it was five seconds, at the most,' he says in a small voice.

'Then why exactly are you confessing to it in such guilt-ridden tones?'

'I – I'm not – I'm not guilty! Although, of course, I _feel _guilty –'

'Interesting that it was a snog with a seventeen-year-old that looks exactly like Hermione. I wonder what this says about –'

'Ginny!' he gasps, moving around on his knees to face her. 'Gin – that was nothing to do with anything – don't think that –'

'Believe me when I tell you, Harry, that I don't know whatto think.'

'It was a mistake,' he insists, dimly aware that he is stretching the string hanging between them to breaking point. 'Gin, I didn't know what I was doing –'

'That is _not_ an excuse.'

'But –'

'Fine, she kissed you –' she spits, twisting around with bright eyes – 'but don't you _dare_ try to say it's all right because you were drunk – you were drinking with someone else's daughter! Imagine if that was – was one of Lily's friends – when her friends all traipse round to our house to ogle the Boy Who Lived when she's fourteen, what are you going to do? Buy them all some Ogden's and get off with one of them? For fuck's _sake_, Harry!'

'Oh for God's – that's completely different –'

'In what way?'

'Because – because Daphne's –'

'Hermione's daughter – _Ron's _daughter! She is my _niece_, Harry! How the hell is Ron going to feel about this?'

Harry winces. 'I didn't think of that.'

'No! Because you haven't thought about anything but yourself!'

'That's – that's not true –'

'_I_ needed you to be here yesterday, but instead, you leave me to deal with our children and with _Mum_ – I know she seems fine now but can you even _imagine_ the hysterics we endured last night? – and you go off in a huff because Ron wanted to keep the fact that he had a daughter he'd never known about to himself for a couple of days – leave me to go on as if everything's normal, everything's fine, darling, Mummy and Daddy have just had a little fight, when _I'm_ hurting too, I feel – betrayed and … and confused, too – she was my friend as well, Harry!'

He takes a shaking breath. 'I know she was. I didn't … I didn't go off to have a little moment with Ron and Hermione, Ginny, I didn't even know that Ron was there – I didn't see either one of them till this morning. I didn't even know where I was going, by that time I didn't even know what direction I was walking in … I was all … fucked up, yesterday.' He shakes his head. 'Completely and utterly mentally and physically fucked up.'

'God, Harry, I'm not pissed off because I've been left out of some _touching Harry Ron and Hermione moment_, I'm upset because you didn't _stay with me_.'

She falls still; her fury seems to have ebbed away, leaving nothing but a pair of heartbreakingly empty eyes. 'Not that any of that's got anything to do with the fact that you kissed another woman last night.'

'I … But it _was_ shewho kissed me. I'm being honest, Ginny. I wouldn't do that.'

She leans back against the wall and stares up at the ceiling. 'People don't just leap out of dark corners and start kissing strange men,' she says dully. 'People don't even do that to men they know. Don't pretend you don't know when a kiss is coming.'

There is too much truth in that to argue with, so Harry shoves his glasses up to his forehead and rubs at his brow. 'I … I know I'm not the only one affected by this whole thing, Ginny. All right, maybe I didn't know it yesterday, but I know it now. I know she was your friend, too.'

Ginny is quiet for a second. Then, she says, '_Best _friend.'

'_Best_ friend.'

There is another pause. Harry looks down at his knees again.

'You have to sleep on the sofa for the next two weeks.'

His head cocks up sideways. 'You forgive me, then?'

'It's hardly the first time a teenager has attacked you,' she says with a disappointed exhalation of breath that does not quite qualify as a sigh.

'Ginny …' he starts. 'Ginny … I –'

'Harry, Jesus. I don't give a shit that a seventeen-year-old jumped on you. It's what led to that even being a possibility that hurts. You storming off, you not wanting to confide in me, you forgetting about my feelings, you getting drunk and storming up to Hermione's house, you not realising how deeply inappropriate it is for you to spend hours drunkenly bonding with a seventeen-year-old you don't know ...'

'Ginny, this isn't an excuse, but you should know – I was really far gone by the time I got there,' says Harry. 'I wasn't exactly making conscious decisions. I know it's not an excuse!' he adds at her glare. 'An explanation,' he offers.

She looks at the ceiling. 'What happened afterwards?'

Harry winces. 'She burst into tears and started telling me about her boyfriend.'

For the first time since the confession, Ginny smiles. 'Serves you right.'

'I took her into the kitchen and tried to make her drink water. Told her it would all be OK. Told her some stuff about Hogwarts, and what Ron and Hermione were like. I told her about Hermione getting upset when Ron didn't invite her to the Yule Ball in fourth year. And the whole Lavender Brown disaster.'

After a second, he says, 'I'm so sorry. I've been a twat.'

'I know,' says Ginny. 'I told you.'

'I know I ...' he starts. He tries to find the words. 'I was thinking this morning, I know I take advantage of you, sometimes. You're stronger than me. I'm OK at some things but you can hold it together better than me, you always have done, and I take advantage of it. I take the piss. I don't know what the fuck I thought I was doing. And I was angry that you'd known what was going on and hadn't told me, but I was so incredibly selfish and –'

'It's all right, Harry,' she interrupts, shaking her head and leaning towards him slightly. 'It's all right.'

'I didn't – I didn't want …' He tails off with a hopeless look.

She sighs again, but he takes a chance and reaches out. When he wraps an arm around her waist and shifts her body along the hall and up close to his, she doesn't resist.

Her head drops onto his shoulder. 'Harry, what am I going to do with you?'

'Forgive me because you love me?' he mumbles, burying his face into her hair.

She closes her eyes.

His hand drifts up from her waist to her hair. 'I love you.'

'I love you too, for some reason,' she says tiredly.

He twists a piece of hair around his finger.

'Hermione's going to kill you, you know,' she says.

He buries his face back into her neck. 'How about we keep this our little secret?'

'What, as payback for Hermione's rather big secret?'

'I was thinking more to stop a poor teenager from being awfully embarrassed, but fine, if that's how you want it,' he says.

'Yes, because _she's _the only one who'd be embarrassed.'

He laughs into her neck. 'What am I going to have to do to make you keep this quiet?'

'I could think of a few things …' It sounds to Harry like she might be smiling.

'Yeah?'

'After your two weeks on the sofa, of course.'

He sighs. 'Bitch.'

'Adulterer.'

'Sadist.'

'We'll be all right, won't we?' she asks abruptly.

'Of course we will,' he says, stroking her arm. 'All four of us.'

'Are you forgetting one of your children?'

'I meant us and Ron and Hermione. But yes, James and Al and Lily as well.'

'All seven of us.'

He rests his head on top of hers. 'What about Daphne?'

'Fine, all eight of us,' she says.

'What about everyone else?'

'They don't count,' she says crossly as he laughs. 'That lot don't really care, anyway.'

'They do, though.'

'I know.' She sighs. 'I know.'

'More than I thought they would,' he says.

'Well, if they don't care that much about Hermione, then they care about Ron. Like Charlie, for instance. But George, and I think Percy, as well, a bit, care about Hermione herself.'

They are silent.

'What's she like?' Ginny asks.

'The same,' says Harry. 'And different.'

Ginny's head shifts comfortably on his shoulder.

'But there's enough of the old Hermione,' he continues. 'She's definitely recognisable.'

'I've missed her so much.'

'Same.'

'Do you think she's going to stay?' she asks.

After a second, he says, 'I think they have some unfinished business.'

Ginny does not ask him who he is talking about.

::::::

::::::

Ron and Hermione are walking together, out into the countryside.

When Ron had joined her in the back garden, after she'd left the kitchen, he hadn't known what to say. They had looked at each other for a moment, and then she'd said, 'Shall we walk?' And so they had started to walk down to the end of the garden.

Ron had said, 'Shall we talk?'

Hermione had looked at him and said, 'Is there anything else to say?'

And so here they are, walking side by side in silence. They have left the garden now, and the wards that protect the boundaries of the house. They are moving up a footpath that goes over a small hill and then roughly in the direction of Xenophilius Lovegood's old house.

Suddenly, Hermione stops. Ron stops as well.

She is staring at him.

He looks at her.

One night when he was eighteen, when he, Harry and Hermione were living out of Mundungus Fletcher's tent, Ron had looked at Hermione and thought that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. A few hours ago, when he had woken up on the sofa and seen her sitting on that table, staring at the curtains with her hair all fluffy, Ron had thought that he had been wrong when he was eighteen, and that the most beautiful woman in the world was sitting right in front of him. But now he realises that both those times he was wrong, as usual. Hermione, right now, is so beautiful that he can hardly breathe. The way she is looking at him has made his heart jump out of his chest and sink right down through his body. He can feel it squelching somewhere down by his feet.

'Ron,' says Hermione. 'Would you like to go on a date with me?'

He laughs. 'Yeah,' he says. 'All right, then.'

Ron has absolutely no idea what is going to happen next, or where this is going to go, and he doesn't actually care in the slightest. All he knows is that Hermione Granger is standing right in front of him, and for the first time in eighteen years, he isn't dreaming.

::::::

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**- THE END -**

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Notes: Please follow the link in my profile to my Livejournal to see some thoughts/endnotes about the writing of this, and to see all my other fic, if you are so interested :)


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